The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1907-08-21
The Gamekeeper's Daughter.


there was no little girl or boy to play
with; but for all that, little Georgina,
the head gamekeeper's daughter, ney-
er knew what it was to feel lonesome.
She had such a playground and such
playfellows as most of us have at
/ times dreamed of but none of us have
in reality.
In the first place, she lived with her
good father and mother in just such
| thatch-roofed, diamond.paned, rose
embowered cottage nesting beside a
little mirror-like lake among century
old trees, as one sees in picture books,
and reads of in poems and songs of
Old England.
Almost as far as she could see the
level green park stretched away, brok-
en- here and there by clumps of giant
oaks, and beyond up against the sky
was the blue line of hills that formed
the edge CT the world; and this lovely
world was all her own, for, of course,
Georgina, the only child, ruled in the
pretty cottage as completely as her
father lorded it over his many furred
and feathered subjects.
In whatever direction she chose to
wander she saw her playmates wait
ing, as she always supposed, for her
to come and play with them.
On the little lake by the cottage
floated and quacked and honked ducks
of every color, white geese and gray,
and black geese, and graceful, long
necked swans. At quite the other side
of the lake she might see at the same
time herd of fallow deer, their brown
bodies dappled with spots of snowy
white, their heavy horns contrasting
strangely with the slender tree-like
horns of the red deer.
Innumerable little gray rabbits
hoped noiselessly about in all direc-
tions, and English pheasants-the hens
in modest buff, the cocks in gorgeous
brown, blue and gold-darted swiftly
among the underbrush; but the queer
est of all her friends were the gray
kangaroos-"H HoppityhopsY Georgina
called them. The grounds around the
cottage were fenced off from the sur
rounding park, but Georgina had so
frequently accompanied her father out
side in his search for pheasants'
nests, or to see how the deer Jared,
that she felt perfectly at home even
when alone.
Perhaps her greatest joy was in
coaXing acquaintance with the timid
baby deer. If she came suddenly upon
one hiding in the grass or behind
stone, it frequently remained quite mo-
tionless, curled up into the smallest
possible space and pressed fiat to the
ground, only its watchful eye proving
that it was wideawake and very anx-
ious. In the leafy forest this would be
its safest course, for there its protec-
tive coloring would render 1t almost
invisible, but in the open park, on the
green grass, its inherited instinct for
concealment failed 1t, and it was all
too visible to friend or foe. Georgina
would creep up ever so quietly and sit
down beside 1t. Sometimes she even
succeeded in stroking it's soft coat.
Then the mother deer would circle
anxiously around, coming as near as
she dared, her great ears thrown for
ward, every nerve tense, and ready to
spring away at the least hostile move:
but it always ended by the fawn sud-
denly scrambling to its long thin legs,
and, with little cries of alarm, dashing
over the greensward to join its mother
and find concealment in the deep sha-
dows of the cool forest.-J. M. Gleeson
In st. Nicholas.