The flock sneaks out at night to eavesdrop at Beth’s house

The flock’s nighttime eavesdropping at Beth’s house is a small but consequential act of investigation: Miss Maple’s determination to hear Beth and Rebecca turns the sheep’s caution about leaving the flock into a covert excursion, and the view they secure through Beth’s window exposes details of George’s life and the village’s past. The sheep do not enter the house. Instead, they watch from outside, first concealed in darkness and then peering through a gap made by devouring the geraniums. What they hear is partial, but it gives their investigation new leads and leaves one of Beth’s most personal reasons unanswered.

The decision to leave the flock

Miss Maple organizes the expedition because she is determined to reach the village that evening and listen to Beth’s conversation with the red-haired woman. She does not want to go alone: she had tried that before and did not dare repeat it. She therefore summons the flock’s bravest sheep, choosing Zora and Othello, Lane for his practical judgment, Cloud because they usually graze together, and Mopple the Whale, whose memory makes him useful to an investigation. Her proposal meets little enthusiasm. Cloud’s objection—that no sheep may leave the flock—expresses the risk in a rule that Miss Maple is prepared to breach for the sake of finding out what the humans know.

The planned party is larger than the group that ultimately sets out. At dusk, Miss Maple, Othello, and Mopple the Whale make their way to the village to listen outside Beth’s house. The distinction matters: the expedition begins as a call to the flock’s boldest members, but the actual surveillance falls to three sheep. The scene presents their investigation not as a formal undertaking but as a hesitant departure from familiar flock behavior, undertaken because Miss Maple considers the conversation important enough to risk being away from the others.

Waiting outside Beth’s house

The sheep hide in darkness in the yard, between a floodlit house with a pointed roof and the cold neon of a takeaway. Sounds from the street—engines, men laughing, and barking dogs—reverberate around the walls and garage. The place is exposed to noise but gives them cover: they wait behind broom, having rehearsed what to do if Rebecca comes only as far as the door. The sheep recognize her purposeful approach by her shadow on the ground and by her familiar smell of earth, sun, and health, now partly masked by cigarette smoke.

Mopple the Whale’s part in the expedition is made distinctly uncomfortable. He had been promised chips to persuade him to come, but Miss Maple and Othello hurry him past the takeaway. Through the window he watches Beth finish a meal of raw vegetables—kohlrabi, carrots, radishes, celery, and a large red apple—rather than being given the promised food. Beth leaves some of the meal uneaten, briefly raising his hopes, but carries the plate away. He has to brace his front hooves on an upside-down bench and stretch his neck to see into the house; the position makes his back ache. The sheep observe a domestic interior from outside, aware that seeing a human house is not the same as going in and out of one.

When Rebecca knocks, Beth is absorbed in passing a string of wooden beads through her fingers and murmuring a prayer. The knock makes her jump. She puts the beads away, traces a sign in front of her breast with her thumb, and goes to the door. Beth and Rebecca then pass beyond the sheep’s view, leaving them with only indistinct murmuring. Their position gives them proximity without understanding: they know a conversation is taking place, but cannot yet hear what it means.

Making a view through the window

As Beth and Rebecca continue talking inside, Miss Maple reaches the limit of her patience with listening from behind the plants. She orders Mopple the Whale to eat through the geraniums and make an opening. He does not move at first, standing between Miss Maple and Othello with an unhappy, indigestion-like expression. Miss Maple becomes angry, and Othello reinforces her instruction. A short time later, the geraniums have been destroyed and the sheep can see the two women seated at the table. From indoors, their heads appear in the window box, but neither Beth nor Rebecca looks outside; both are absorbed in their conversation.

The improvised opening changes the expedition from an attempt to catch indistinct sounds into an act of direct observation. It also makes Mopple’s reluctant participation physically consequential: the sheep obtain their view only after the plants that concealed them are eaten away. The scene’s comedy—the promised chips, aching back, and ruined flowers—does not erase the risk of the operation. The sheep remain outside and unseen, relying on Beth and Rebecca’s concentration to keep their presence undiscovered.

What the sheep overhear

Through the new gap, the sheep see a small bundle of straw on the table. Someone has tied it into the shape of a human body, with arms, legs, and a head, and driven a twig through it. Beth describes it as something that could be dismissed as a boy’s prank. She recalls that children used to call George the Goblin King behind his back and says they feared him. The conversation therefore places the pierced straw figure beside stories about George’s reputation, without resolving who made it or what it was meant to signify.

Rebecca asks why George had been away so often recently and what he did when absent. Beth says she does not know for certain. When he left, he dressed in a suit and white shirt and looked ten years younger, like a gentleman. She believes he went to Dublin, to offices and banks, because he wanted to get away from Glennkill. Rebecca asks whether someone did not want him to leave, and Beth nods. This exchange gives the sheep a concrete account of George’s wish to escape the village and suggests that his departures met resistance, while leaving the identity and purpose of that opposition unstated.

Beth places the village’s change further back than George’s death. She remembers returning from six months in Africa seven years earlier to find everything different: there was more superstition and less fear of the Lord. George, she says, was affected more than anyone and became increasingly reclusive. When Rebecca asks what had happened, Beth bitterly insists that people were eager to say that nothing had happened, then adds that since then they had been waiting for something to save them. The conversation connects the community’s silence and expectation to a turning point in its past, but does not specify what the supposedly nonexistent event was.

Departure and unresolved questions

After Rebecca asks why Beth stayed in a place she evidently thinks little of, Beth pauses and gives only a very personal reason. Rebecca asks whether she means George, but Beth has already closed the door. Rebecca then crosses the yard and disappears around the corner. The exchange ends without explaining Beth’s attachment or what she meant by the name George. For the sheep, the expedition yields evidence rather than a complete account: the straw figure, George’s attempts to leave, and the village’s change seven years earlier all become part of what they have learned, while Beth’s private reason remains closed behind the door.

The excursion also sharpens the difference between the sheep’s habits and their investigation. Cloud’s warning about leaving the flock remains the rule they have challenged; Miss Maple’s decision to go anyway makes listening a deliberate risk, not a casual wander. They gain access to human knowledge by staying outside the house, watching closely, and enduring the discomfort of their hiding place. The result is a scene of partial revelation: the sheep see more than they could from the yard, but what they learn opens questions rather than settling them.