60 SPRING RAMBLES 



if any other cow goes into her stall she'd kill her. 

 She fought her way to the top, and now they all 

 respect her as the head cow ; and so it is with the 

 second, and third, and fourth down to the last, 

 every one has had to fight for the position she 

 holds. See that red cow yonder? she is No. four. 

 She broke both her horns off righting for that place. 

 Of course, she can't fight any more now, but she 

 keeps the place she won in fair fight." 



Now, that was a lesson for me, for I had no 

 notion before that cows were so punctilious and 

 jealous of the position they had fought for. There 

 are a score or more of them, and each one of them 

 knows her own stall, and keeps it till she has pro- 

 moted herself by her valour. As a rule there is 

 perfect harmony amongst them when once the 

 question of precedency is settled. 



Now let us home to dinner. It is a pleasant 

 thing to be hungry, and at the same time to know 

 that a good dinner awaits you. I knew that much, 

 but I had not the remotest idea of what that dinner 

 would consist and it was a dinner. Why, O Pro- 

 fessor; why, O Piscator Major, were you not there 

 to partake of it? It was too good to be eaten 

 alone ! It was a feast for a round tableful of jolly 

 anglers. It was a feast such as I had not tasted, or 

 perhaps even heard of, for sixty years. What was 

 it ? It was four-and-twenty black birds baked in a 

 pie ! I do not vouch, however, for the exact number. 

 The last time I tasted a pie like this, and the flavour 

 of it remains with me to this day, was when, as a 



