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CHAPTER VII.
THE HISTORY OF THE SEVEN YOUNG GEESE.
When the seven young Geese began to travel, they went over a large plain,
on which there was but one tree, and that was, a very bad one.
So four of them went up to the top of it, and looked about them; while the
other three waddled up and down, and repeated poetry, and their last six
lessons in arithmetic, geography, and cookery.
Presently they perceived, a long way off, an object of the most interesting
and obese appearance, having a perfectly round body exactly resembling a
boiled plum-pudding, with two little wings, and a beak, and three feathers
growing out of his head, and only one leg.
So, after a time, all the seven young Geese said to each other, "Beyond all
doubt this beast must be a Plum-pudding Flea!"
On which they incautiously began to sing aloud,
"Plum-pudding Flea,
Plum-pudding Flea,
Wherever you be,
Oh! come to our tree,
And listen, oh! listen, oh! listen to me!"
And no sooner had they sung this verse than the Plum-pudding Flea began to
hop and skip on his one leg with the most dreadful velocity, and came
straight to the tree, where he stopped, and looked about him in a vacant
and voluminous manner.
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