So the girls turned over and over the bodies, examining them with all the minuteness in their power. Jenny declared it impossible, and Helen was in despair; Peggy thought she observed something, and Barbara declared it to be nothing. I watched them with some amusement, nor less the men in the Office. They stood around us laughing heartily at the remarks of the investigators, running up a joke to a climax, and then pursuing another, not always at the sole expense of the lasses, who could retort cleverly, impeaching their mockers as utterly unable to distinguish a male from a female fowl. At the long run, a happy thought struck Jenny.
“But where’s the ‘pensioner?’ ” cried she.
“Ay, the ‘pensioner,’ ” responded her neighbour Nelly.
“Had he a spliced leg?” inquired I.
“Yes,” replied the first, “a dog broke it, and Nelly and I bound it up with two thin pieces of wood and a string.”
“Ay, and he got aye the best handful of barley,” rejoined Nelly; “but the leg of the ‘pensioner’ was cured a month ago, and the bandage removed.”
“Is that the ‘pensioner?’ ” said I, as I shewed the leg of one which I had observed in the forenoon as having on it the appearance of a healed-up sore.
“Ay, just the creature,” they both exclaimed. “It was the right leg, and you’ll see yet the marks of the string.”
The discovery was followed by the merriment of the men, who asserted that some one or other of the girls must have had a pensioner for a lover, with the designation of whom the drake had been honoured; but the girls indignantly denied the charge, declaring that they could not fancy a man pensioner, however much they might love a drake one.
“Besides,” added Jenny, cleverly, “he was our pensioner, not the Queen’s.”