106 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



this be, I wonder, that little boys are then at home 

 from school for the holidays % And now, as I suppose 

 you don't much care to go in for shearing and pluck- 

 ing geese, or half-roasting them before a slow fire for 

 the sake of pates de foie gras, or, indeed, for the 

 perpetration of any such kindred barbarity, we will, 

 by your leave, say here, Good night to Marmion, and 

 proceed upon the even tenor of our way. 



But the turkey's "my darling, my darling, my 

 darling ! " White, copper-brown, or barred — they 

 are a gentle, profitable fowl, not excluding the grand 

 Turk himself, who slices magnificently at Christmas- 

 time, if well foddered in life, and in death well 

 carved. But the hen — so sweetly wanting in the 

 long-tongued bombast of her Cleon-like spouse — if 

 you seek to watch her to her nest, she walks so 

 leisurely, with an air so ladylike and well-bred, so 

 gracefully nonchalante, just pecking indifferently at 

 the grass-seeds as she passes ; no vulgar cunning 

 about her, no sly bucolic tricks ; one is almost 

 ashamed to sneak along behind the fence and dog 

 her to the retired spot, where she glides up noise- 

 lessly into the hedge, and, picking off the dry leaves 

 with which she had concealed them from the crow, 

 resumes her solitary guard in the far-off fence upon 

 the fine, delicious, delicate, pink-spotted eggs, so 

 frequently, alas ! — unless removed to quarters nearer 

 home — to disappear by the knavery of Reynard. 



When hatched, if you find the wee ones pining, 

 their dear little wings trailing helplessly along the 

 ground, and their whole air depressed, then whip 

 them up, and having conveyed them within the 



