Transcribed from the 1902 Gay and Bird edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE DIARY OF A GOOSE GIRL
by
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
with illustrations by
CLAUDE A. SHEPPERSON
GAY AND BIRD
22 bedford street, strand
LONDON
1902
TO THE HENS, DUCKS, AND GEESE
WHO SO KINDLY GAVE ME
SITTINGS FOR THESE
SKETCHES THE BOOK
IS GRATEFULLY
INSCRIBED
CHAPTER I.
Thornycroft Farm, near Barbury Green, July 1, 190-.
In alluding to myself as a Goose Girl, I am using only the most modest of my titles; for I am also a poultry-maid, a tender of Belgian hares and rabbits, and a shepherdess; but I particularly fancy the rôle of Goose Girl, because it recalls the German fairy tales of my early youth, when I always yearned, but never hoped, to be precisely what I now am.
As I was jolting along these charming Sussex roads the other day, a fat buff pony and a tippy cart being my manner of progression, I chanced upon the village of Barbury Green.
One glance was enough for any woman, who, having eyes to see, could see with them; but I made assurance doubly sure by driving about a little, struggling to conceal my new-born passion from the stable-boy who was my escort. Then, it being high noon of a cloudless day, I descended from the trap and said to the astonished yokel: “You may go back to the Hydropathic; I amspending a month or two here. Wait a moment—I’ll send a message, please!”
I then scribbled a word or two to those having me in custody.
“I am very tired of people,” the note ran, “and want to rest myself by living a while with things. Address me (if you must) at Barbury Green post-office, or at all events send me a box of simple clothing there—nothing but shirts and skirts, please. I cannotforget that I am only twenty miles from Oxenbridge (though it might be one hundred and twenty, which is the reason I adore it),but I rely upon you to keep an honourable distance yourselves, and not to divulge my place of retreat to others, especially to—you know whom! Do not pursue me. I will never be taken alive!”
Having cut, thus, the cable that bound me to civilisation, andhaving seen the buff pony and the dazed yokel disappear in a cloud of dust, I looked about me with what Stevenson calls a “fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy,” the joy of a succe