We saw Saddlebank duck his wand in a coaxing way, like an angler dropping his fly for fish; he made all sorts of curious easy flourishes against the sky and branched up the lane.

We struck after him, little suspecting that he had a goose in front, but he had; he had cut one of the loiterers off from the flock; and to see him handle his wand on either side his goose, encouraging it to go forward, and remonstrating, and addressing it in bits of Latin, and the creature pattering stiff and astonished, sent us in a dance of laughter.
'What have you done, old Saddle ?' said Temple, though it was perfectly clear what Saddlebank had done.
'I've carved off a slice of Michaelmas,' said Saddlebank, and he hewed the air to flick delicately at his goose's head.
'What do you mean--a slice ?' said we.
We wanted to be certain the goose was captured booty.

Saddlebank would talk nothing but his fun.

Temple fetched a roaring sigh: 'Oh! how good this goose 'd be with our champagne.' The idea seized and enraptured me.

'Saddlebank, I 'll buy him off you,' I said.
'Chink won't flavour him,' said Saddlebank, still at his business: 'here, you two, cut back by the down and try all your might to get a dozen apples before Catman counts heads at the door, and you hold your tongues.' We shot past the man with the geese--I pitied him--clipped a corner of the down, and by dint of hard running reached the main street, mad for apples, before Catman appeared there.