“‘Flattery, my lord,’ says Huggins. And then he pointed to a bird.
“‘Do you see him?’ says he. ‘There’s the proudest, healthiest cock in my yard—one as, if humoured, would fill a whole corporation, down to its hungriest kitchen gal on two and six a week and what she could pick up, with the marrer of deliciousness. A dream, he is.’
“‘A nightmare, by the looks of him,’ says the mayor, ‘There’s more of sepulchre than of meat about him,’ he says.
“‘Ah!’ says Huggins; ‘and that shows your ignorance. It’s just slighting that keeps him in his place till he’s wanted. If I was to flatter that bird, sir, he’d puff himself out that amazing with self-importance, he’d burst in a week and anticipate his own market. You take him home, and feed him judicious on admiration and little else, and you’ll have such a feast of him in the end as you never dreamed.’
“‘How much for him?’ says the mayor.
“‘Not a penny less than two guineas,’ says Huggins.
“‘Preposterous!’ says the mayor.
“‘O, very well!’ says Huggins. ‘I’d as lief you refused. He shall be three to the next customer.’
“Well, the mayor allowed himself to be persuaded; and he had the bird sent home and put in a coop. And every day, and half a dozen times a day, he’d go down and praise the creature to its face till its very wattles turned purple with pleasure. There’s nothing too fulsome for a turkey to swallow. The very ‘gobble-gobble’ of him set the mayor’s jaws going with a foretaste of delight.
“‘Gobble-gobble! I could eat you, my beauty!’ says he, just as a rapturous mother talks to her child.