Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/171

 was a most devoted and tender lover, but a jealous one; and he insisted on her living up to his ideals. There was no more loafing about the barn-yard for her. Michael chose a little rushy point, jutting out into the goose-pond, for their abode; and observing this, Steve Barron gave them a feed-trough close to the water's edge. As a protection against skunks, foxes and other night marauders, the geese were always shut up in a pen in the yard at night; but Barron surmised that any prowler who interfered with Michael's establishment would get a rude surprise.

The domestic geese had a slack habit of dropping their first eggs of the season wherever they happened to be at the critical moment,—whether in the middle of the barn-yard, out in the meadow, or even in the mud of the pond. As their laying time was early morning, Barron saved the eggs by not letting the careless mothers out till after breakfast. But the grey goose was not allowed any such slackness. As soon as Michael perceived that she would presently begin to lay, he persuaded her to arrange a rude nest, of dead rushes and dry grass, in the centre of the reedy point. He helped her to construct it; and he insisted on her laying her first egg in it. After that he had no more trouble with her, for she became as interested in her domestic duties as he was himself. Instincts of her remote wild ancestry awakened within her, and she grew almost as fierce as