There was one sort of action which they could understand very well indeed. The Little Girls came home just then and their mother had them bring oats from the barn to scatter on the river. Then the Gander, with his wife and the other Geese, gladly went back to the river to feed, for there is nothing which pleases Geese better than to eat oats that are floating on the water.
[THE FOWLS HAVE A JOKE PLAYED ON THEM]
When the Man first bought the farm and came to live there, he could not understand a thing that his poultry said. This made it very hard for him, and was something which he could not learn from his books and papers. You remember how the Little Girls understood, better than he, what the Cocks meant by crowing so joyfully one day. It is often true that children who think much about such things and listen carefully come to know what fowls mean when they talk.
The Man was really a very clever one, much more clever than the Farmer who had lived there before him, and he decided that since he was to spend much of his time among poultry, he would learn to understand what they were saying. He began to listen very carefully and to notice what they did when they made certain sounds. It is quite surprising how much people can learn by using their eyes and ears carefully, and without asking questions, too.
That was why, before the summer was over, the Man could tell quite correctly, whenever a fowl spoke, whether he was hungry or happy or angry or scared. Not only these, but many other things he could tell by carefully listening. He could not understand a Hen in exactly the way in which her Chickens understand her, but he understood well enough to help him very much in his work. Then he tried talking the poultry language. That was much harder, yet he kept on trying, for he was not the sort of Man to give up just because the task was hard. He had been a teacher for many years, and he knew how much can be done by studying hard and sticking to it.
The Man was very full of fun, too, since he had grown so strong and fat on the farm. He dearly loved a joke, and was getting ready to play a very big joke on some of his poultry.