ay. 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 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,