The Diary of a Goose Girl | Page 5

be of
use, but she is dressing the Square Baby in the morning and putting him
to bed at night just at the hours when the feathered young things are
undergoing the same operation.
A Goose Girl, like a poet, is sometimes born, sometimes otherwise. I
am of the born variety. No training was necessary; I put my head on my
pillow as a complicated product of modern civilisation on a Tuesday
night, and on a Wednesday morning I awoke as a Goose Girl.
{Hens . . . go to bed at a virtuous hour: p19.jpg}
My destiny slumbered during the day, but at eight o'clock I heard a
terrific squawking in the direction of the duck-ponds, and, aimlessly
drifting in that direction, I came upon Phoebe trying to induce ducks
and drakes, geese and ganders, to retire for the night. They have to be

driven into enclosures behind fences of wire netting, fastened into little
rat-proof boxes, or shut into separate coops, so as to be safe from their
natural enemies, the rats and foxes; which, obeying, I suppose, the law
of supply and demand, abound in this neighbourhood. The old ganders
are allowed their liberty, being of such age, discretion, sagacity, and
pugnacity that they can be trusted to fight their own battles.
{Ducks and geese . . . would roam the streets till morning: p20.jpg}
The intelligence of hens, though modest, is of such an order that it
prompts them to go to bed at a virtuous hour of their own accord; but
ducks and geese have to be materially assisted, or I believe they would
roam till morning. Never did small boy detest and resist being carried
off to his nursery as these dullards, young and old, detest and resist
being driven to theirs. Whether they suffer from insomnia, or nightmare,
or whether they simply prefer the sweet air of liberty (and death) to the
odour of captivity and the coop, I have no means of knowing.
{The pole was not long enough: p21.jpg}
Phoebe stood by one of the duck-ponds, a long pole in her hand, and a
helpless expression in that doughlike countenance of hers, where
aimless contours and features unite to make a kind of facial blur. (What
does the carrier see in it?) The pole was not long enough to reach the
ducks, and Phoebe's method lacked spirit and adroitness, so that it was
natural, perhaps, that they refused to leave the water, the evening being
warm, with an uncommon fine sunset.
{They . . . waddle under the wrong fence: p22.jpg}
I saw the situation at once and ran to meet it with a glow of interest and
anticipation. If there is anything in the world I enjoy, it is making
somebody do something that he doesn't want to do; and if, when
victory perches upon my banner, the somebody can be brought to say
that he ought to have done it without my making him, that adds the
unforgettable touch to pleasure, though seldom, alas! does it happen.
Then ensued the delightful and stimulating hour that has now become a
feature of the day; an hour in which the remembrance of the

table-d'hote dinner at the Hydro, going on at identically the same time,
only stirs me to a keener joy and gratitude.
{Honking and hissing like a bewildered orchestra: p23.jpg}
{Harried and pecked by the big geese: p24.jpg}
The ducks swim round in circles, hide under the willows, and attempt
to creep into the rat-holes in the banks, a stupidity so crass that it merits
instant death, which it somehow always escapes. Then they come out in
couples and waddle under the wrong fence into the lower meadow, fly
madly under the tool-house, pitch blindly in with the sitting hens, and
out again in short order, all the time quacking and squawking, honking
and hissing like a bewildered orchestra. By dint of splashing the water
with poles, throwing pebbles, beating the shrubs at the pond's edges,
"shooing" frantically with our skirts, crawling beneath bars to head
them off, and prodding them from under bushes to urge them on, we
finally get the older ones out of the water and the younger ones into
some sort of relation to their various retreats; but, owing to their lack of
geography, hatred of home, and general recalcitrancy, they none of
them turn up in the right place and have to be sorted out. We uncover
the top of the little house, or the enclosure as it may be, or reach in at
the door, and, seizing the struggling victim, drag him forth and take
him where he should have had the wit to go in the first instance. The
weak ones get in with the strong and are in danger of being trampled;
two