“Sure,” she said. “I love the pigs and the cows and the horses, and the ducks and the geese; but, after all, there’s no goose like a lord.”
He laughed, but a little uneasily. He was not quite so confident as he had been of the simple nature of his task. He would just like, for an experiment, to eschew badinage, and insinuate a thought more feeling into the conversation.
“I think I agree with you,” he said. “A lord is a goose.”
“Unless he’s a gander,” said she.
“You called him a goose,” he answered with asperity; “and a goose he shall be.”
“Well, don’t quarrel about it,” she protested. “Goose and gander and gosling, they say, are three sounds but one thing. Why is a lord—whichever he is?”
“Well, what was your reason for calling him a goose?”
“I never did. I said there was no goose like him.”
“That was to flatter the goose, I think.”
“Was it, now? And I meant it to flatter the lord.”