The Diary of a Goose Girl | Page 4

on wheels, with a little string to drag him about.
{The Woodmancote carrier: p13.jpg}
Phoebe confided to me that she was on the eve of loving the postman
when the carrier came across her horizon.
"It doesn't do to be too hysty, does it, miss?" she asked me as we were
weeding the onion bed. "I was to give the postman his answer on the
Monday night, and it was on the Monday morning that Mr. Gladwish
made his first trip here as carrier. I may say I never wyvered from that
moment, and no more did he. When I think how near I came to
promising the postman it gives me a turn." (I can understand that, for I
once met the man I nearly promised years before to marry, and we both
experienced such a sense of relief at being free instead of bound that we
came near falling in love for sheer joy.)
{Picture of toy on wheels: p14.jpg}
The last and most important member of the household is the Square
Baby. His name is Albert Edward, and he is really five years old and no
baby at all; but his appearance on this planet was in the nature of a
complete surprise to all parties concerned, and he is spoiled accordingly.
He has a square head and jaw, square shoulders, square hands and feet.
He is red and white and solid and stolid and slow-witted, as the young
of his class commonly are, and will make a bulwark of the nation in
course of time, I should think; for England has to produce a few

thousand such square babies every year for use in the colonies and in
the standing army. Albert Edward has already a military gait, and when
he has acquired a habit of obedience at all comparable with his power
of command, he will be able to take up the white man's burden with
distinguished success. Meantime I can never look at him without
marvelling how the English climate can transmute bacon and eggs, tea
and the solid household loaf into such radiant roses and lilies as bloom
upon his cheeks and lips.
CHAPTER III
July 8th.
Thornycroft is by way of being a small poultry farm.
In reaching it from Barbury Green, you take the first left-hand road, go
till you drop, and there you are.
It reminds me of my "grandmother's farm at Older." Did you know the
song when you were a child?--
My grandmother had a very fine farm 'Way down in the fields of Older.
With a cluck-cluck here, And a cluck-cluck there, Here and there a
cluck-cluck, Cluck-cluck here and there, Down in the fields at Older.
It goes on for ever by the simple subterfuge of changing a few words in
each verse.
My grandmother had a very fine farm 'Way down in the fields of Older.
With a quack-quack here, And a quack-quack there, Here and there a
quack-quack, Quack-quack here and there, Down in the fields at Older.
This is followed by the gobble-gobble, moo-moo, baa-baa, etc., as long
as the laureate's imagination and the infant's breath hold good. The tune
is pretty, and I do not know, or did not, when I was young, a more
fascinating lyric.
{The sitting hens: p17.jpg}

Thornycroft House must have belonged to a country gentleman once
upon a time, or to more than one; men who built on a bit here and there
once in a hundred years, until finally we have this charmingly irregular
and dilapidated whole. You go up three steps into Mrs. Heaven's room,
down two into mine, while Phoebe's is up in a sort of turret with long,
narrow lattices opening into the creepers. There are crooked little
stair-cases, passages that branch off into other passages and lead
nowhere in particular; I can't think of a better house in which to play
hide and seek on a wet day. In front, what was once, doubtless, a green,
is cut up into greens; to wit, a vegetable garden, where the onions,
turnips, and potatoes grow cosily up to the very door-sill; the utilitarian
aspect of it all being varied by some scarlet-runners and a scattering of
poppies on either side of the path.
The Belgian hares have their habitation in a corner fifty feet distant;
one large enclosure for poultry lies just outside the sweetbrier hedge;
the others, with all the houses and coops, are in the meadow at the back,
where also our tumbler pigeons are kept.
Phoebe attends to the poultry; it is her department. Mr. Heaven has
neither the force nor the finesse required, and the gentle reader who
thinks these qualities unneeded in so humble a calling has only to spend
a few days at Thornycroft to be convinced. Mrs. Heaven would