Chapter 13 Chapter 12 Geese

One day the geese came into the garden by the secret passage shortly after sunrise, before the dew had dried on the lawn.Tom stole downstairs at midnight as usual, and when he opened the back door of the hall, it was just dawn in the garden, and he was startled to see the geese rushing into the garden.The two big gooses and the big gander stretched their necks and looked at Tom as usual, but the little gooses walked around on the lawn like no one else, and some ate a few stalks of grass; One sucked a little dew; some simply lay on the lawn, with white feathers on their breasts sticking to the grass, looking like boats from a distance; the worst thing was, they left puddles of dark green goose droppings .

"This is trouble," Tom thought.He thought of Abel, and Hubert, and James Edgar, and Susan the maid, and that old sullen woman who he supposed was Hattie's aunt, the only people he knew.He did not include Hatty among these people, because he knew that Hatty was indirectly responsible for the geese breaking into the garden.The geese came in by the secret passage she had made in the fence.Of course Tom was responsible, too, he admitted readily to himself, and would readily admit to anyone who could hear him. Before long, others also spotted the geese in the garden.The first was Abel, who came down a path that led to the lawn.Suddenly he stopped, his blue eyes widened, his mouth opened, and for a moment he was too startled to speak.

Then a bedroom window was opened, and Tom heard a shrill voice which must have been Hattie's aunt.She called Abel and asked him, "What are the geese doing in the garden?" Although everyone can see clearly what the goose is doing, what should we do?How did the geese get in here?Especially,— Tom hears here.My heart is half cold - who let them in? Abel answered the first two questions methodically, and before he could finish speaking, the window slammed shut.Then there was a din of voices and footsteps descending the stairs, as if the whole family had been mobilized.Tom quickly hid behind a tree.In this case, although he knew that others could not see him, he instinctively hid.When he ran behind the tree, he happened to pass in front of Abel, and he couldn't help feeling a little nervous.

Not long after, those people ran out of their homes in a hurry and stood at the gate.Hattie also came out to watch the excitement, but she didn't know that this was the trouble she caused.Hubert, James and Edgar jumped to the forefront, ready for battle. "Don't rush!" Abel called to them from across the lawn. "Drive them slowly into the orchard, where they can't spoil anything, and then I'll drive them back to the pasture." At this time, the dog named Pincher also came, and he was the last to arrive.It crawled under people's legs to the doorway and stood in front of the crowd.

"Turn the dog away!" Abel yelled.As he spoke, he walked slowly towards the geese, and the three boys did the same, driving the geese towards the gate of the orchard.No one heeded Abel's warning about the dog, because the dog was staying at the door obediently.But Tom saw that the dog was shaking with excitement, and soon he would lose control of himself! The geese walked forward obediently, their heads raised high, and they kept looking back.Gosling went ahead.They were very nervous and frightened seeing so many people.At this moment, Pincher howled and rushed forward.The big geese, the baby geese, the mother goose, and the male goose panicked suddenly. The three big geese seemed to have turned into a dozen at once, and their calls seemed to be made by a hundred geese.Their white and gray wings spread wide and flapped incessantly, seeming to cover the entire lawn.Male geese, female geese, and goslings ran around in anger and fear, stepping on flower beds, goose droppings, and some even stepped on their own kind.Tom saw the big gander posing to protect the goslings, but he didn't know that his flat, big foot stepped on the back of a gosling.Fortunately, the big flat goose paws were not as strong as the boots, and the little goose didn't get flattened, but got more flustered after getting up.

Generally speaking, the loss caused by the geese rioting in the garden is great, mainly the garden and the lawn.Even Pincher knew that the good man would not suffer in the face of immediate losses, and with his tail between his legs, he rushed past the goose beaks that were attacking him, skirted the lawn, and ran into the building.Abel and the boys backed a few steps involuntarily, because the gander was aggressively protecting the two wives beside him and a group of children behind him, and his angry and reckless look was really scary. People hurt uncle. After the geese calmed down a little, they drove up more cautiously.Hatty ran forward to open the orchard gate.Tom was still hiding there, and there was nothing to see now but the goose-trodden lawn and my aunt still standing at the door of the building.Tom had imagined that she must have a face of iron, and seeing her angry expression made her even more terrifying.

She and Tom were standing in different places, and they both heard voices in the orchard. Abel and the boys had driven the geese to the gate of the orchard, and apparently had driven the geese out of the orchard without incident. Then came a boy. There was a triumphant cheer, and then the door slammed shut. Tom thought they were all coming back, but they didn't.He realized at once that they were walking towards the garden fence to see how the geese got in. Abel sighed as he walked with them.subsequently.Their voices came from beyond the fence. Finally, they returned to the lawn.As they returned across the lawn, Abel was still rueful about the morning's loss: the lettuce leaves trampled to pieces, the cabbage seedlings trampled or snapped off;

His landlady asked him sharply how the geese had been brought in, and he replied that there was a hole in the fence with a passage through which the geese had probably entered. "God knows how they got through, could it be taught by the devil?" The melancholy Abel expressed his bewilderment. "It wasn't Goosebone," Edgar began. "Hatty did it." Tom knew that Edgar was only guessing, but it was immediately felt that Hatty might have gotten it right. Abel suddenly stopped talking, as if he was even more confused.The others fell silent, too, and there was a deathly silence around them.Tom could hear Aunt Hattie's panting from a distance.

"Hatty!" she called, in a loud, rough voice that was not like a woman's. Hatty came out of her hiding place and walked across the lawn to her aunt at a steady pace.Her pale face made her eyes and hair appear even darker.Tom remembered afterwards that her lips had turned white with terror.She walked up to her aunt and stopped.My aunt didn't ask her if she had made a hole in the fence to make a passage, or why she had done it. Tom didn't ask any of the questions he thought she was going to ask, she asked no questions at all, and just said, "You did it." Hatty said nothing.It seemed to Tom that she had become mute.The people that had been brought into the garden by her fantasies, the characters of the Bible, the fairies, and those of the legends and her own imagination, none of her friends came to help her, not even Tom. Also powerless.

Tom turned his head away, thinking that Hattie's aunt was going to beat her, but instead of hitting her, she gave Hattie a slap in the face.She said Hattie was an unwanted child, an ungrateful beggar, and that she adopted Hattie only for her dead husband's sake, because Hattie was his niece; , but good intentions are not rewarded; she thought that Hattie would know how to be grateful and be obedient, but Hattie was ignorant, ungrateful, and had nothing to eat.Disgusting, embarrassing to aunt and cousin, she was a liar, mischievous, and a complete devil. "Alas!" murmured Tom to himself, disconsolately, "why didn't Hatty's parents come and fetch her?" He didn't believe it anymore--he didn't believe it a long time ago, Hatty's parents were king and queen.But not even the poorest and humblest parent would see their children suffer in this way.Tom knew that if such a thing happened to him, his loving parents would come rushing up to him, howling and yelling, and taking him away.

"Don't Hattie's mother know? Why doesn't her father come?" cried Tom, bending over his face with his hands, hating himself for being powerless to relieve Hattie's pain. He heard the woman's vicious voice kept cursing, cursing, and finally stopped, and the surroundings were quiet.After a while, he involuntarily looked up at the door of the building, but there was no one there.Did all these people, Hatty included, walk away without a word, or did they disappear like smoke?Tom didn't know. Tom got up, walked towards the end of the garden, climbed over the low wall, wandered a while in the woods, and at last, sitting under a tree, fell asleep with fatigue.When he woke up, he found that the surrounding environment had changed, as if the time had also changed.However, the sun is still shining from the east through the leaves, which means it is still morning. He climbed over the parapet and went back into the garden, looking for Hattie or Abel or whoever, but that murderous woman.He turned a corner at the corner, walked along the wall with the sundial, and saw a child in front of him.It was a little girl, only half Hatty's height, all dressed in black.Black skirt, black pants, black shoes.Her hair is black, and the ribbons that tie her hair are also black.Her headband was undone, and her hair fell over her face, where she was crying with her hands in her face. Tom had never seen anyone so sad, and he wanted to go away quietly.However, the little girl's frail and lonely appearance prompted him to change his mind.Especially this morning, he felt somehow unable to ignore it. He approached the little girl and said, "Don't cry!" It seemed ridiculous to do so, since no one in the garden could hear him except Hatty. The little girl heard it, to Tom's surprise, for she wriggled toward him, as if seeking comfort.She didn't stop crying, though, and she didn't take her hands off her face. "Why are you crying?" asked Tom softly. "I'm homeless!" she broke down in tears. "I don't have any parents!" Only then did Tom understand why she was all alone in black mourning and weeping.Tom also found it unbelievable and inexplicable: the little girl's voice and appearance were very familiar, very similar to... "Don't cry!" repeated Tom, helplessly. "Well, brother!" she sobbed. Tom was taken aback when he heard this, and he immediately understood that the little girl had mistook herself for her cousin Hubert, James or Edgar. Yes, she was Hattie, the Hattie he knew, but another Hattie.This Hatty was younger, lonely, parentless, homeless.She became a poor, lonely orphan, reluctantly adopted by her aunt, a cruel, merciless woman who loved only her son. Tom felt he couldn't tell Hatty at this moment that he wasn't her cousin, because that would frighten her, and he didn't know how to comfort her.So he didn't say anything more, and walked away quietly. After that, he never saw Little Hatty again.When she went to the garden the next day, she saw an older Hatty, the same as he had first seen him. After that, Tom never mentioned her parents again, and used it as a joke.Sometimes, thinking of her own story again, Hattie pretended to Tom like a noble princess imprisoned, and Tom didn't expose her.