ap who stopped one day and lectured the
crowd about it from the opposite side of the street. He called me
Pilgrim, and said the little horse was 'Pollion,' or some such name, and
kept on shouting out that I was to fight him for a heavenly crown. After
that they called us "Polly and the Pilgrim, fighting for the crown." It
riled me, that did, and at the very next house at which he pulled up I
got down and said I'd come for two of Scotch. That was the beginning. It
took me years to break myself of the habit.

"But there," he continued, "it has always been the same. I hadn't been a
fortnight in my first situation before my employer gave me a goose
weighing eighteen pounds as a Christmas present."

"Well, that couldn't have done you any harm," I remarked. "That was
lucky enough."

"So the other clerks said at the time," he replied. "The old gentleman
had never been known to give anything away before in his life. 'He's
taken a fancy to you,' they said; 'you are a lucky beggar!'"

He sighed heavily. I felt there was a story attached.

"What did you do with it?" I asked.

"That was the trouble," he returned. "I didn't know what to do with it.
It was ten o'clock on Christmas Eve, just as I was leaving, that he gave
it to me. 'Tiddling Brothers have sent me a goose, Biggles,' he said to
me as I helped him on with his great-coat. 'Very kind of 'em, but I
don't want it myself; you can have it!'

"Of course I thanked him, and was very grateful. He wished me a merry
Christmas and went out. I tied the thing up in brown paper, and took it
under my arm. It was a fine bird, but heavy.

"Under all the circumstances, and it being Christmas time, I thought I
would treat myself to a glass of beer. I went into a quiet little house
at the corner of the Lane and laid the goose on the counter.

"'That's a big 'un,' said the landlord; 'you'll get a good cut off him to-
morrow.'

"His words set me thinking, and for the first time it struck me that I
didn't want the bird--that it was of no use to me at all. I was going
down to spend the holidays with my young lady's people in Kent."

"Was this the canary young lady?" I interrupted.

"No," he replied. "This was before that one. It was this goose I'm
telling you of that upset this one. Well, her folks were big farmers; it
would have been absurd taking a goose down to them, and I knew no one in
London to give it to, so when the landlord came round again I asked him