Certain it is that the next night passed distressfully to the poultry of farmer Thorpe. When he looked in the morning, where many a turkey had been fattening for Christmas, and capons and fowls strutted proud, he found feathers but not fowls. The geese, indeed, were spared, Heaven only knows why; but from the imperial black bubblyjock down to Dame Partlet's youngest daughter, all the rest were gone. Yet there was a large fierce dog in the yard, as fierce as his master or his master's bull. There are, however, always in this world _moyens de parvenir_; and the fierce dog was found to have made himself very comfortable during the cold wintry night with feathers which must have been plucked off his tender flock under his nose. What a picture of
"A faithless guardian of a charge too good!"
However, putting the morality of the thing out of the question, the fact is curious, as the first recorded instance of a dog using a feather-bed.
The whole of the last paragraph is a huge parenthesis; and as it is not easy to get back again after such an inordinate digression without a jump or an hiatus, we will take the latter, and end the chapter here.
"There now, my good woman, you have hugged the boy enough," said Mr. Woodyard; "you have kissed my hand, and the young man's; and the next thing is to put the child to bed, and keep him there for the next three days. I will see that he is taken care of; but mind you don't give him any of your neighbours' hens, or hares, or partridges; not because he or his stomach would care a straw whether they were stolen or not; but because he must not eat animal food, however it is come by."
"Mayn't I take him up to my own people?" asked the woman, with an anxious look.
"Why! you lawless baggage, would you kill the child?" exclaimed the surgeon, fiercely. "I tell you that he has been tossed by a bull, had a severe shock to his whole system, has got his shoulder dislocated, requires perfect quiet and careful attendance, cool food, and an equable temperature, to prevent inflammation; and you talk of taking him up to a set of jolly beggars, in rotten tents, to sleep upon the ground, drink gin, and be stuffed with stolen poultry. You must be mad to think of such a thing; or not his mother at all; which I have a notion is the case, for he's as white as you are dingy."