d held out the ingenious hope that the
round-and-round feeling would very likely cure the up-and-down
sensation. It did not, however, and Tony tumbled off during the first
revolution.

Jackanapes was not absolutely free from qualms, but having once
mounted the Black Prince he stuck to him as a horseman should. During
the first round he waved his hat, and observed with some concern that
the Black Prince had lost an ear since last Fair; at the second, he
looked a little pale but sat upright, though somewhat unnecessarily
rigid; at the third round he shut his eyes. During the fourth his hat
fell off, and he clasped his horse's neck. By the fifth he had laid
his yellow head against the Black Prince's mane, and so clung anyhow
till the hobby-horses stopped, when the proprietor assisted him to
alight, and he sat down rather suddenly and said he had enjoyed it
very much.

The Grey Goose always ran away at the first approach of the caravans,
and never came back to the Green till there was nothing left of the
Fair but footmarks and oyster-shells. Running away was her pet
principle; the only system, she maintained, by which you can live long
and easily, and 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.