“As if you didn’t know! We had the thing boiled for thirteen hours, and yet when it was brought to the table we might as well have tried to cut through the Rock of Gibraltar with a pocket-knife.”
“What do you mean? You don’t mean to say that you had it cooked?”
“Didn’t you send it to be cooked?”
“Cooked! cooked! Great heavens, man! I sent it to be stuffed and preserved as a curiosity in the club. That swan has been in my family for two hundred and eighty years. It was one of the identical birds fed by the children of Charles I.—you’ve seen the picture of it. My ancestor held the post of ‘master of the swans and keeper of the king’s cygnets sure.’ It is said that a swan will live for three hundred years or thereabouts. And you plucked it, and cooked it! Great heavens! It was a bit tough, I suppose?”
“Tough?”
“Yes; I daresay you’d be tough, too, about a.d. 2200. And I thought it would look so well in the hall!”
At the same time that the tale just recorded was told to me, I heard another Lincolnshire story. I do not suppose that it is new. A certain church was situated at a place that was within the sphere of influence of some fens when in flood. The consequence was that during a severe winter, divine service was held only every second Sunday. Once, however, the weather was so bad that the parson did not think it worth his while going near the church for five Sundays. This fact came to the ears of the Bishop, and he wrote for an explanation. The clergyman replied as follows:—
“Your lordship has been quite correctly informed regarding the length of the interval that has elapsed since my church was open; but the fact is that the devil himself couldn’t get at my parishioners in the winter, and I promise your lordship to be before him in the spring.”