d
lose nothing. If you run away when you see danger, you can come back
when all is safe. Run quickly, return slowly, hold your head high, and
gabble as loud as you can, and you'll preserve the respect of the Goose
Green to a peaceful old age. Why should you struggle and get hurt, if
you can lower your head and swerve, and not lose a feather? Why in the
world should any one spoil the pleasure of life, or risk his skin, if he
can help it?

"'What's the use'
Said the Goose."

Before answering which one might have to consider what world--which
life--whether his skin were a goose-skin; but the Grey Goose's head
would never have held all that.

Grass soon grows over footprints, and the village children took the
oyster-shells to trim their gardens with; but the year after Tony rode
Bucephalus there lingered another relic of Fairtime, in which Jackanapes
was deeply interested. "The Green" proper was originally only part of a
straggling common, which in its turn merged into some wilder waste land
where gipsies sometimes squatted if the authorities would allow them,
especially after the annual Fair. And it was after the Fair that
Jackanapes, out rambling by himself, was knocked over by the Gipsy's son
riding the Gipsy's red-haired pony at break-neck pace across the common.

Jackanapes got up and shook himself, none the worse, except for being
heels over head in love with the red-haired pony. What a rate he went
at! How he spurned the ground with his nimble feet! How his red coat
shone in the sunshine! And what bright eyes peeped out of his dark
forelock as it was blown by the wind!

The Gipsy boy had had a fright, and he was willing enough to reward
Jackanapes for not having been hurt, by consenting to let him have a
ride.

"Do you mean to kill the little fine gentleman, and swing us all on the
gibbet, you rascal?" screamed the Gipsy-mother, who came up just as
Jackanapes and the pony set off.

"He would get on," replied her son. "It'll not kill him. He'll fall on
his yellow head, and it's as tough as a cocoanut."

But Jackanapes did not fall. He stuck to the red-haired pony as he had
stuck to the hobbyhorse; but oh, how different the delight of this wild
gallop with flesh and blood! Just as his legs were beginning to feel as
if he did not feel them, the Gipsy boy cried "Lollo!" Round went the
pony so unceremoniously, that, with as little ceremony, Jackanapes clung
to his neck, and he did not properly recover himse