Still we lack one young duckling, and he at length is found dead by the hedge.

A rat has evidently seized him and choked him at a single throttle, but in such haste that he has not had time to carry away the tiny body.
"Poor think!" says Phoebe tearfully; "it looks as if it was 'it with some kind of a wepping.

I don't know whatever to do with the rats, they're gettin' that fearocious!" Before I was admitted into daily contact with the living goose (my previous intercourse with him having been carried on when gravy and stuffing obscured his true personality), I thought him a very Dreyfus among fowls, a sorely slandered bird, to whom justice had never been done; for even the gentle Darwin is hard upon him.

My opinion is undergoing some slight modifications, but I withhold judgment at present, hoping that some of the follies, faults, vagaries, and limitations that I observe in Phoebe's geese may be due to Phoebe's educational methods, which were, before my advent, those of the darkest ages..