A Forlorn Goose
I could hear the clock chiming down in the village as I stood at the gate looking across the field. The scramble to prepare birds for Christmas was over, and I watched the sole survivor of a flock of geese coming waddling up from the pond. A month ago she would have been one of a dozen going back to the coops or pens at feeding- time. The forlorn goose twitched her tail and crossed the bare hill, going between a drystone wall and a gatepost to regain the farmyard. The survivors of the chicken population watched the goose from a shed where they were huddled under a cart. There was something pathetic in the sight of them. The goose halted as though considering whether feeding-time was over or not, and then made a half-hearted approach to the chickens. There was no comfort to be had for this poor creature, but before I left a woman came hurrying across from the farmhouse and bustled the mixed collection of birds into a shed. The goose had evidently come too late for supper, and no one cared that she was hungry so long as the door was padlocked against the fox. Concern as to the plumpness of a goose is no longer acute.
Previous page
