Temple and I thought the word was out and hurrahed, and back came Barnshed.  We had a task in persuading him to resume his expedition, as well as Saddlebank to forgive us.  Saddlebank’s anger was excessive.  We conciliated him by calling him captain, and pretending to swear an oath of allegiance.  He now led us through a wood on to some fields down to a shady dell, where we were to hold the feast in privacy.  He did not descend it himself.  Vexatious as it was to see a tramp’s tent there, we nevertheless acknowledged the respectful greeting of the women and the man with a few questions about tentpegs, pots, and tin mugs.  Saddlebank remained aloft, keeping a look-out for the day-school fellows, Chaunter, Davis, and Bystop, my commissioners.  They did not keep us waiting long.  They had driven to the spot in a cart, according to Saddlebank’s directions.  Our provisions were in three large hampers.  We praised their forethought loudly at the sight of an extra bottle of champagne, with two bottles of ginger-wine, two of currant, two of raisin, four pint bottles of ale, six of ginger-beer, a Dutch cheese, a heap of tarts, three sally-lunns, and four shillingsworth of toffy.  Temple and I joined our apples to the mass:  a sight at which some of the boys exulted aloud.  The tramp-women insisted on spreading things out for us:  ten yards off their children squatted staring:  the man smoked and chaffed us.

At last Saddlebank came running over the hill-side, making as if he meant to bowl down what looked a black body of a baby against the sky, and shouting, ‘See, you fellows, here’s a find!’ He ran through us, swinging his goose up to the hampers, saying that he had found the goose under a furze-bush.  While the words were coming out of his mouth, he saw the tramps, and the male tramp’s eyes and his met.

The man had one eyebrow and his lips at one corner screwed in a queer lift:  he winked slowly.  ‘Odd! ain’t it?’ he said.

Saddlebank shouldered round on us, and cried, ’Confound you fellows! here’s a beastly place you’ve pitched upon.’  His face was the colour of scarlet in patches.

‘Now, I call it a beautiful place,’ said the man, ’and if you finds gooses hereabouts growing ready for the fire, all but plucking, why, it’s a bountiful place, I call it.’

The women tried to keep him silent.  But for them we should have moved our encampment.  ’Why, of course, young gentlemen, if you want to eat the goose, we’ll pluck it for you and cook it for you, all nice,’ they said.  ‘How can young gentlemen do that for theirselves?’

It was clear to us we must have a fire for the goose.  Certain observations current among us about the necessity to remove the goose’s inside, and not to lose the giblets, which even the boy who named them confessed his inability to recognize, inclined the majority to accept the woman’s proposal.  Saddlebank said it was on our heads, then.