150 THE WILD GOOSE.

And the impudent little rascals would actually snatch at .
the hay-stalks and carry off a piece or two now and then right
from under the goose, besides filching her cast-off feathers, for
they were setting about a:second set of nests, as if there were
not enough sparrows in the world already. But the goose sat
calmly on.

“Tt all comes of laying golden eggs,” said she to herself.
‘They cannot be expected to burst out all in a minute like any
common wild bird’s eggs!” At the end of each day she said,
“Only one day more,” and by the end of the long thirty days
she had forgotten the beginning.

At last one morning cr-r-rick! crack! went one of the egg
shells; then another and then another! Out came five of the
sweetest little downy yellow goslings.

“Golden eggs, indeed? Golden birds! That is better,”
said the delighted mother. ‘I must take them at once to the
farmer’s wife, who has never seen anything like ¢/zs before.”

‘ Bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo!” said the mother goose, as she stood
at the back kitchen door with the troop of little ones all round
her, to show them to the farmer’s wife, and to have a little talk
with her about the goslings before she took them to the pond
for their first dip.

The young geese could swim as well as if they had been
accustomed to the water for a hundred years instead of having
been born that morning only.

“Give your babies a swimming-bath in the nearest pond
the moment they are born,” muttered the mother-goose. She
was quite sure it was the right thing to do, because it had been
her grandmother's way.

And the safest thing that anyone can do is to follow the
example of his grandfathers and grandmothers, if it is a good
one. Therefore, she was a wise goose.