The steps ceased for a moment, then there came a sound as of a little rush towards the bed, and in an instant something with loud flappings and rustlings had descended upon us, and rested heavily, with hollow cacklings of contentment, upon our buried forms (for I suppose I need hardly state that we had both bolted under the bedclothes).
“I believe it’s only the goose after all!” I said, as soon as I was sufficiently recovered to speak.
“Only the goose!” returned my second cousin, with concentrated fury; “I don’t see much to be grateful for in that. And how do you know it isn’t the gander? I’m simply stifling here, but I know the brute would peck me if I went out from under the clothes. I wish to goodness it had been a burglar. Anyhow, they don’t peck.”
This was indisputable; as was also the fact that the bird had to be dislodged. She had worked herself into a position that was probably more satisfactory to her than it was to me, and judging, as I was well able to do, by her weight, she must have been a remarkably strong and vigorous bird.
“Get the matches ready,” I said, gathering myself for an effort. Then, curving myself till the goose must have thought she was sitting on a camel, I gave a heaving plunge. There was a croak, a flop, and a minute afterwards the light of a match revealed a monstrous grey goose standing in pained astonishment on the floor near the bed.
Fortunately the profundities of Joyce repose knew no disturbance, and, still more providentially, the three shilling umbrella was within reach of the bed. Opening this as a safeguard against an attack, which in our then thin costume we should be ill-fitted to
“REVEALED A MONSTROUS GREY GOOSE.”