still has to be produced, but at the first majestic wave of my hand they scuttle toward the shore.  The geese turn to the right, cross the rickyard, and go to their pen; the May ducks turn to the left for their coops, the June ducks follow the hens to the top meadow, and even the idiot gosling has an inspiration now and then and stumbles on his own habitation.

Mrs. Heaven has no reverence for the principles of Comenius, Pestalozzi, or Herbert Spencer as applied to poultry, and when the ducks and geese came out of the pond badly the other night and went waddling and tumbling and hissing all over creation, did not approve of my sending them back into the pond to start afresh.

“I consider it a great waste of time, of good time, miss,” she said; “and, after all, do you consider that educated poultry will be any better eating, or that it will lay more than one egg a day, miss?”

I have given the matter some attention, and I fear Mrs. Heaven is right.  A duck, a goose, or a hen in which I have developed a larger brain, implanted a sense of duty, or instilled an idea of self-government, is likely, on the whole, to be leaner, not fatter.  There is nothing like obeying the voice of conscience for taking the flesh off one’s bones; and, speaking of conscience, Phœbe, whose metaphysics are of the farm farmy, says that hers “felt like a hunlaid hegg for dyes” after she had jilted the postman.

As to the eggs, I am sure the birds will go on laying one a day for ’tis their nature to.  Whether the product of the intelligent, conscious, logical fowl, will be as rich in quality as that of the uneducated and barbaric bird, I cannot say; but it ought at least to be equal to the Denmark egg eaten now by all Londoners; and if, perchance, left uneaten, it is certain to be a very superior wife and mother.

While we are discussing the subject of educating poultry, I confess that the case of Cannibal Ann gives me much anxiety.  Twice in her short career has she been under suspicion of eating her own eggs, but Phœbe has never succeeded in catching her in flagrante delicto.  That eminent detective service was reserved for me, and I have been haunted by the picture ever since.  It is an awful sight to witness a hen gulp her own newly-laid fresh egg, yolk, white, shell, and all; to realise that you have fed, sheltered, chased, and occasionally run in, a being possessed of no moral sense, a being likely to set a bad example, inculcate vicious habits among her innocent sisters, and lower the standard of an entire poultry-yard.  The Young Poultry Keeper’s Friend gives us no advice on this topic, and we do not know whether to treat Cannibal Ann as the victim of a disease, or as a confirmed criminal; whether to administer remedies or cut her off in the flower of her youth.

We have had a sad scene to-night.  A chick has been ailing all day, and when we shut up the brood we found him dead in a corner.

Phœbe put him on the ground while she busied herself about the coop.  The other chicks came out and walked about the dead one again and again, eyeing him curiously.

“Poor little chap!” said Phœbe.  “’E’s never ’ad a mother!  ’E was an incubytor chicken, and wherever I took ’im ’e was picked at.  There was somethink wrong with ’im; ’e never was a fyvorite!”

I put the fluffy body into a hole in the turf, and strewed a handful of grass over him.  “Sad little epitaph!” I thought.  “He never was a fyvorite!”

CHAPTER VIII

July 13th.

I like to watch the Belgian hares eating their trifolium or pea-pods or grass; graceful, gentle things they are, crowding about Mr. Heaven, and standing prettily, not greedily, on their hind legs, to reach for the clover, their delicate nostrils and whiskers all a-quiver with excitement.

As I look out of my window in the dusk I can see one of the mothers galloping across the enclosure, the soft white lining of her tail acting as a beacon-light to the eight infant hares following her, a quaint procession of eight white spots in it glancing line.  In the darkest night those baby creatures could follow their mother through grass or hedge or thicket, and she would need no warning note to show them where to flee in case of danger.  “All you have to do is to follow the white night-light that I keep in the lining of my tail,” she says, when she is giving her first maternal lectures; and it seems a beneficent provision of Nature.  To be sure, Mr. Heaven took his gun and went out to shoot wild rabbits to-day, and I noted that he marked them by those same self-betraying tails, as they scuttled toward their holes or leaped toward the protecting cover of the hedge; so it does not appear whether Nature is on the side of the farmer or the rabbit . . .

There is as much comedy and as much tragedy in poultry life as anywhere, and already I see rifts within lutes.  We have in a cage a French gentleman partridge married to a Hungarian lady of defective sight.  He paces back and forth in the pen restlessly, anything but content with the domestic fireside.  One can see plainly that he is devoted to the Boulevards, and that if left to his own inclinations he would never have chosen any spouse but a thorough Parisienne.

The Hungarian lady is blind of one eye, from some stray shot, I suppose.  She is melancholy at all times, and occasionally goes so far as to beat her head against the wire netting.  If liberated, Mr. Heaven says that her blindness would only expose her to death at the hands of the first sportsman, and it always seems to me as if she knows this, and is ever trying to decide whether a loveless marriage is any better than the tomb.

Then, again, the great, grey gander is, for some mysterious reason, out of favour with the entire family.  He is a noble and amiable bird, by far the best all-round character in the flock, for dignity of mien and large-minded common-sense.  What is the treatment vouchsafed to this blameless husband and father?  One that puts anybody out of sorts with virtue and its scant rewards.  To begin with, the others will not allow him to go into the pond.  There is an organised cabal against it, and he sits solitary on the bank, calm and resigned, but, naturally, a trifle hurt.  His favourite retreat is a tiny sort of island on the edge of the pool under the alders, where with his bent head, and red-rimmed philosophic eyes he regards his own breast and dreams of happier days.  When the others walk into the country twenty-three of them keep together, and Burd Alane (as I have named him from the old ballad) walks by himself.  The lack of harmony is so evident here, and the slight so intentional and direct, that it almost moves me to tears.  The others walk soberly, always in couples, but even Burd Alane’s rightful spouse is on the side of the majority, and avoids her consort.

What is the nature of his offence?  There can be no connubial jealousies, I judge, as geese are strictly monogamous, and having chosen a partner of their joys and sorrows they cleave to each other until death or some other