At Tregarrick Fair they cook a goose in twenty-two different ways;
and as no one who comes to the fair would dream of eating any other
food, you may fancy what a reek of cooking fills the narrow grey
street soon after mid-day.
As a boy, I was always given a holiday to go to the goose-fair; and
it was on my way thither across the moors, that I first made
Fortunio's acquaintance. I wore a new pair of corduroys, that smelt
outrageously--and squeaked, too, as I trotted briskly along the bleak
high road; for I had a bright shilling to spend, and it burnt a hole
in my pocket. I was planning my purchases, when I noticed, on a
windy eminence of the road ahead, a man's figure sharply defined
against the sky.
He was driving a flock of geese, so slowly that I soon caught him up;
and such a man or such geese I had never seen. To begin with, his
rags were worse than a scarecrow's. In one hand he carried a long
staff; the other held a small book close under his nose, and his lean
shoulders bent over as he read in it. It was clear, from the man's
undecided gait, that all his eyes were for this book. Only he would
look up when one of his birds strayed too far on the turf that lined
the highway, and would guide it back to the stones again with his
staff. As for the geese, they were utterly draggle-tailed and
stained with travel, and waddled, every one, with so woe-begone a
limp that I had to laugh as I passed.
The man glanced up, set his forefinger between the pages of his book,
and turned on me a long sallow face and a pair of the most beautiful
brown eyes in the world.
"Little boy," he said, in a quick foreign way--"rosy little boy.
You laugh at my geese, eh?"