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Jinny; and before long it was common knowledge in the Pandervil household: which means that it was known to everyone except Mildred the baby and William the sire. It was for Jinny Randall’s sake that Willy blacked his boots and polished his gaiters with ridiculous frequency; it was for Jinny Randall that, two or three nights a week and twice on Sundays, he dipped his hairbrush into the ewer and laboured to make his hair lie flat and sleek on his head. Jinny Randall was indeed the beginning and the end of Willy. He was born again in the moment of seeing her enter the church after her long sojourn in the halls of culture, and it was some word of hers—Egg never knew quite what— that made the poor sheep finally break out of his pen.
    Had Egg, on the night our history opens, been free to follow the train of thought set stirring byhis son Nicky’s questions, he could scarcely have failed, gazing back across the years, to see in Jinny Randall the arbiter of his brother’s destiny.
    But no hint of cataclysm disturbed the serenity of their setting out together, Egg and Willy Pandervil, on that warm September morning in 1854. In the cart five fat lambs were crowded under a net. Willy held the reins; Egg sat at his side; and the ten white miles that lay between Keyborough and Mercester, or Merster, the nearest market town, slipped slowly, flowed meltingly, under their wheels. Egg’s mood was easy and indolent. Although he did a share of the work, and had found nothing he liked better, he was at heart no farmer, and it was with no farmer’s eye that he watched the fields of ripe corn flowing past. And in the market place at Mercester, having helped Willy to get the five Pandervil lambs into a pen, and listened while Willy conferred for a moment with Mr Fox, he at once allowed his mind to meander off, idly, in pursuit of private fancy, so that the sights and sounds and smells of the market—baa-ing, grunting, jostling beasts, yapping auctioneers, staring farmers—became the mere background for a confused sunlit dream that centred round the ridiculous figure of a goose. At his elbow stood a man dressed in a brown smock and armed with a stick, with which, from time to time, he prodded the back of a fat sow that lay taking her ease in the nearest pen. The sow grunted; the man grunted; the two sized each other up. ‘All well at the Ridge?’ said someone,giving Egg’s arm a friendly nip. ‘Pretty middling good,’ replied Egg. ‘Ah,’ said his friend vaguely, and passed on. The sow had now been goaded into rising: she was not quick, but she could take a hint. And, having achieved his purpose, the man in the brown smock passed on to fresh fields of adventure. The sow lay down again. But soon someone else began prodding at her, and she grunted again. Egg moved away, moved nearer to the goose, which, at five yards distance, had already claimed his attention. The goose was confined in a large wicker basket, alone. It was the only goose in the market, so far as Egg could see; and its solitariness lent colour to his fancy that it was the only one in the world, a unique creation, a highly exotic jest. How many times he had looked at a goose, thought Egg; yet here he was seeing the fantastic thing for the first time—recognizing as strange and individual what had always in the past seemed ordinary. Can it think? asked Egg. Is it looking at me, and does it think I’m funny too? But he did not pursue these inquiries, preferring to enjoy lazily the sensation of his discovery of this bird, staring as a child stares who sees something for the first time, and noting almost with excitement the bright raw beak punctured by nostrils, the violet boot-button eye rimmed with yellow piping, the stiff carriage of the neck, and the creature’s almost pompous solemnity. With an air of dignified inquiry the goose presently thrust its beak through the wicker bars of its prison; and when Egg