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moved nearer,and extended a cautious hand, the beak, opening wide, revealed the queerest interior—a tongue like a double-edged saw and a mouth with serrated roof.
    â€˜Had a talk with Jinny t’other night,’ said Willy at his side.
    â€˜Did you?’ murmured Egg. Well, come to that, Willy often did have a talk with Jinny, didn’t he? The goose withdrew its beak into the basket. The auctioneer arrived and began saying in stern tones that this was the best goose he had ever seen.
    â€˜Yes, had a talk,’ said Willy.
    â€˜Whad she say?’ asked Egg.
    Egg became aware that he and Willy were now hemmed in on every side by bidders and spectators. The bidding had begun. The poultry was being sold, and in particular the goose was being sold. It could not matter to Egg who bought the bird, or what price it fetched; yet he was conscious of giving only half his attention to Willy.
    â€˜Bit noisy here,’ said Willy. ‘Tell you ’nother time.’
    Egg took him at his word and stopped listening to anything but the bidding. Yes, someone had bought the goose, together with certain other birds that were being sold with it. The auctioneer moved on a few paces, taking his congregation with him. And Willy began talking again.
    â€˜Yes, Jinny and I had a bit of a talk.’
    â€˜Bit of a talk, eh?’ said Egg.
    â€˜We did so,’ Willy assured him. ‘Might almost say a bit of a tiff,’ he added after a pause.
    â€˜A tiff?’ echoed Egg. ‘Oh, not a tiff surely?’
    The goose’s new owner was now taking possession of his property. A rich joke that bird was, and no mistake. The man untied the basket, thrust a hand in, and seized the goose cleverly by the legs and drew it out. It squawked and fluttered furiously. Some children stood by, watching the fun—four little boys, the eldest ten, the youngest perhaps five years old. They appeared to be happy children, but in a perfect world their noses would have been wiped. Goose tightly and easily held in one hand, with the other the purchaser fished out of his trousers-pocket a knife. With the help of his teeth he opened the knife. It looked a serviceable instrument for his purpose.
    â€˜She kind of dared me,’ said Willy. He had been telling Egg about this bit of a tiff, but Egg was finding the story a difficult one to follow. And now Egg was conscious of a dull pain in his temples, where the knife had been stuck in … but that was nonsense, it was the goose’s head that had been transfixed, not his. The goose hung upside down from a nail in the fence; black and crimson gobbets dripped from its amusing beak; its white wings beat passionately; and the four little boys pointed, and nudged each other, and giggled delightedly. When the convulsion ended, the glee faded from their eyes. If only the goose could have been brought to life again, thought Egg, they could have had their fun a second time. But thatwas impossible. A pity, said Egg to himself; for he was hot and angry and a little sick; and he was secretly flustered, too, because he could not for the life of him get the drift of Willy’s occasional remarks. Jinny had kind of dared Willy—that was all that Egg could make out. But he could see that the trouble, whatever it was, meant a lot to Willy, and feeling ashamed of his inattention he didn’t care to ask questions that would let poor Willy see how little of the story had been listened to.
    â€˜Of course,’ said Willy, ‘there’s no call to go telling ’em everything at home. But I wanted you to know, because you’ve got a head on your shoulders, moren some of us have. And—well— I wanted you to know.’
    Yes, that was something that Egg did understand; for he would have felt the same about Willy, although Willy had not, as it happened, a very good head on his shoulders. Willy, despite the ten years between them, was nearer in sympathy to Egg than to