66 THE BIRD WATCHER 
the eyes of subscribergggo the gardens, but it had not 
been creditable to the Corporation. True elegance, 
it appears, which can only come from true breeding, 
had been wanting. These ducks were “a mongrel 
lot,” and though they might be pretty to look at and 
entertaining to feed, that was not what the Corpora- 
tion cared about. What the Corporation did care 
about, presumably, was to read in the local papers, or 
be told by their friends that now, at last, there were 
some ducks on the Cheltenham lakes a little better 
than the “ mongrel lot” one had so long been accus- 
tomed to see there, more worthy of themselves, more 
worthy of the town they represented, and so forth. 
So the poor “mongrel lot,” the delight of all the 
children, and of many a grown-up person to boot— 
Charles the Second was grown up, and a clever man 
too—were done away with, and a few pairs of select, 
blue-blooded strangers (more soothing to gentle 
bourgeois feelings) were introduced in their place. 
The children who came to feed them said, ‘‘ Where 
are the others? Where are all the rest gone to? 
There’s no fun in feeding three or four.” Nor is 
there, in comparison with feeding a hundred, as one 
grown-up person at least can testify. As additions, 
these new arrivals would have been welcome enough, 
and being of distinct species they would not, probably, 
have entered into mésalliances with the others, to 
make a correct Corporation blush. Why could they 
not have stayed? But this, I suppose, was the way of 
it. Here were pleasure gardens for which the public 
