“Oh, if he has dared to do anything to my geese, I will never forgive him!” the good wife said, angrily.

“H-u-s-h, Sally! make no rash speeches.  It is more than probable that he has killed some two or three of them.  But never mind, if he has.  He will get over this pet, and be sorry for it.”

“Yes; but what good will his being sorry do me?  Will it bring my geese to life?”

“Ah, well, Sally, never mind.  Let us wait until we learn what all this disturbance is about.”

In about ten minutes the children came home, bearing the bodies of three geese, each without a head.

“Oh, is not that too much for human endurance?” cried Mrs. Gray.  “Where did you find them?”

“We found them lying out in the road,” said the oldest of the two children, “and when we picked them up, Mr. Barton said, ’Tell your father that I have yoked his geese for him, to save him the trouble, as his hands are all too busy to do it.’”

“I’d sue him for it!” said Mrs. Gray, in an indignant tone.

“And what good would that do, Sally?”

“Why, it would do a great deal of good.  It would teach him better manners.  It would punish him; and he deserves punishment.”

“And punish us into the bargain.  We have lost three geese, now, but we still have their good fat bodies to eat.  A lawsuit would cost us many geese, and not leave us even so much as the feathers, besides giving us a world of trouble and vexation.  No, no, Sally; just let it rest, and he will be sorry for it, I know.”

“Sorry for it, indeed!  And what good will his being sorry for it do us, I should like to know?  Next he will kill a cow, and then we must be satisfied with his being sorry for it!  Now, I can tell you, that I don’t believe in that doctrine.  Nor do I believe anything about his being sorry—­the crabbed, ill-natured wretch!”

“Don’t call hard names, Sally,” said Farmer Gray, in a mild, soothing tone.  “Neighbour Barton was not himself when he killed the geese.  Like every other angry person, he was a little insane, and did what he would not have done had he been perfectly in his right mind.  When you are a little excited, you know, Sally, that even you do and say unreasonable things.”

“Me do and say unreasonable things!” exclaimed Mrs. Gray, with a look and tone of indignant astonishment; “me do and say unreasonable things, when I am angry!  I don’t understand you, Mr. Gray.”

“May-be I can help you a little.  Don’t you remember how angry you were when Mr. Mellon’s old brindle got into our garden, and trampled over your lettuce-bed, and how you struck her with the oven-pole, and knocked off one of her horns?”

“But I didn’t mean to do that, though.”

“No; but then you were angry, and struck old Brindle with a right good will.  And if Mr. Mellon had felt disposed, he might have prosecuted for damages.”

“But she had no business there.”