quiet domestic-looking set in a homely
little place off the Goswell Road.

"I explained my views to the landlord. He said he had no objection; he
supposed I would stand drinks round afterwards. I said I should be
delighted to do so, and showed him the bird.

"'It looks a bit poorly,' he said. He was a Devonshire man.

"'Oh, that's nothing,' I explained. 'I happened to drop it. That will
all wash off.'

"'It smells a bit queer, too,' he said.

"'That's mud,' I answered; 'you know what London mud is. And a gentleman
spilled some gin over it. Nobody will notice that when it's cooked.'

"'Well,' he replied. 'I don't think I'll take a hand myself, but if any
other gent likes to, that's his affair.'

"Nobody seemed enthusiastic. I started it at sixpence, and took a ticket
myself. The potman had a free chance for superintending the
arrangements, and he succeeded in inducing five other men, much against
their will, to join us. I won it myself, and paid out three and twopence
for drinks. A solemn-looking individual who had been snoring in a corner
suddenly woke up as I was going out, and offered me sevenpence ha'penny
for it--why sevenpence ha'penny I have never been able to understand. He
would have taken it away, I should never have seen it again, and my whole
life might have been different. But Fate has always been against me. I
replied, with perhaps unnecessary hauteur, that I wasn't a Christmas
dinner fund for the destitute, and walked out.

"It was getting late, and I had a long walk home to my lodgings. I was
beginning to wish I had never seen the bird. I estimated its weight by
this time to be thirty-six pounds.

"The idea occurred to me to sell it to a poulterer. I looked for a shop,
I found one in Myddleton Street. There wasn't a customer near it, but by
the way the man was shouting you might have thought that he was doing all
the trade of Clerkenwell. I took the goose out of the parcel and laid it
on the shelf before him.

"'What's this?' he asked.

"'It's a goose,' I said. 'You can have it cheap.'

"He just seized the thing by the neck and flung it at me. I dodged, and
it caught the side of my head. You can have no idea, if you've never
been hit on the head with a goose, how if hurts. I picked it up and hit
him back with it, and a policeman came up with the usual, 'Now then,
what's all this about?'

"I explained the facts. The poulterer stepped to the edge of the curb
and apo