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We will see if you cannot be taught to love them when they have ceased to mean Pie. Moreover, you shall be confined for two days and two nights in the pen where I kept the geese. And porridge shall be your only food the while. Go, Master Hugh." So the wicked Steward was punished. But he learned his lesson; and after a little while he grew to love the birds almost as well as Saint Werburgh herself.
And standing beside the largest of these pens Saint Werburgh made a strange cry, like the voice of the geese themselves, a cry which seemed to say, "Come here, Grayking's geese, with Grayking at the head!"
"Where is the gray goose with the black ring about his neck?" began Saint Werburgh without any preface, looking at him keenly. He stammered and grew confused. "I I don't know, Lady Abbess," he faltered. He had not guessed that she cared especially about the geese. "Nay, you know well," said Saint Werburgh, "for I bade you feed them and set them free this morning. But one is gone."
And when he hears the name of Saint Werburgh, which has been handed down to him from grandfather to grandson for twelve hundred years, he will give an especially loud "Honk!" of praise. Dear Saint Werburgh! One would almost be willing to make a goose of himself if so he might see her again, with all her feathered friends about her.
And she said to herself, "They shall have at least one good breakfast of convent porridge before they go." Saint Werburgh trusted Hugh, the Steward, for she did not yet know the wickedness of his heart. So she told him how she had punished the geese for robbing him, and how she was sure they would never do so any more.
Now when one loves a little creature very much and understands it well, one can almost always make it do what one wishes that is, if one wishes right. For some time Saint Werburgh had been interested in a flock of wild geese which came every day to get their breakfast in the convent meadow, and to have a morning bath in the pond beneath the window of her cell.
SAINT WERBURGH was busy all the rest of that day and early the next morning too, so she could not get out again to see the prisoned geese. But when she went to her cell for the morning rest after her work was done, she sat down by the window and looked out smilingly, thinking to see her friend Grayking and the others taking their bath in the meadow. But there were no geese to be seen!
"Then I will go and question the Steward," she continued, "and if he is guilty I will punish him and make him bring Grayking back to you." The geese flew away feeling somewhat comforted, and Saint Werburgh sent speedily for Master Hugh. He came, looking much surprised, for he could not imagine what she wanted of him.
"This of geese, Lady Abbess," he replied. "A flock of long-necked thieves have been in my new-planted field of corn, and have stolen all that was to make my harvest." Saint Werburgh bit her lips. "What geese were they?" she faltered, though she guessed the truth. "Whence the rascals come, I know not," he answered, "but this I know. They are the same which gather every morning in the meadow yonder.
"What is it, Master Hugh?" asked Saint Werburgh in her gentle voice. "Have you not money enough to buy to-morrow's breakfast?" for it was his duty to pay the convent bills. "Nay, Lady Abbess," he answered gruffly; "it is not lack of money that troubles me. It is abundance of geese." "Geese! How? Why?" exclaimed Saint Werburgh, startled. "What of geese, Master Hugh?"
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