f, he began to feel rather a
pain in his head; and although a headache is not generally a pleasant
thing, yet this was so slight and at the same time so interesting,
that he did not much mind it. For on each side of the crown of his
head there appeared a little swelling, very hot and tender, which
grew into a little knob of black velvet, and which he thought very
handsome, though you and I perhaps might not think so. But he was so
proud of it that he always looked at it in the water, when he went
down to drink of an evening, to see how it was growing. And the best
of it was, that not one of the big stags now had much more on their
heads than he had, for they had lost their horns, and were looking
very foolish with their great necks and manes and nothing to carry on
them. He saw the big stags so very seldom now that he could hardly
find an opportunity of asking them what had happened; and when at last
he got a chance of putting the question to a huge old fellow, whom he
came upon one day with his mouth full of ivy, he was in such a hurry
that I am afraid he must have seemed inquisitive. For the old Stag
stared at him for a minute with the ivy sticking out of his lips, and
then said very gruffly, "Go away, and mind your own business. Little
calves should be seen and not heard." And our Deer was so much vexed
at being called a little Calf, whereas he was really a Pricket, that
he slunk away down to the water to have a look at his velvet; but it
was getting on so beautifully that he felt quite comforted, and was
glad that, although the Stag had been so unkind, he had not said,
"You're another," or something rude and disrespectful of that kind,
which would have been most unbecoming in a Red-Deer.

A few days later the matter was partly explained to him. For early one
morning when he was out at feed in a growing corn-field with a number
of young male deer, a four-year-old came galloping up the hedge trough
with a sheep-dog racing after him. The four-year-old was in such a
flurry that he jumped the fence at the corner of the field without
noticing an overhanging branch, and thump! down fell both of his horns
on one side of the hedge, while he galloped on, leaving them behind
him, on the other. The rest of the deer also went off in a hurry, you
may be sure, after such a scare, for they did not expect a sheep-dog
to be out so early; and, indeed, it is quite possible that the
sheep-dog had no business to be out. His mother looked