"Jim can do that. Still, if you don't mind handling the decoys----"
"Not at all," he said, going up to the fenced inclosures which ran from
a rod or two inland down into the shallow water, making three separate
yards for geese, swans, and ducks.
Jim was already in the duck pen, hustling the several dozen mallard and
black ducks into an inland corral. The indignant birds, quacking a
concerted protest, waddled up from the shore, and, one by one, the boy
seized the suitable ones, and passed them over the fence to Marche. He
handed them to Molly Herold, who waded out to the dory, a duck tucked
under either arm, and slipped them deftly into the decoy-crates forward
and aft.
The geese were harder to manage--great, sleek, pastel-tinted birds whose
wing blows had the force of a man's fist--and they flapped and
struggled and buffeted Jim till his blonde head spun; but at last Marche
and Molly had them crated in the dory.
Then the wild swans' turn came--great, white creatures with black beaks
and feet; and Molly and Marche were laughing as they struggled to catch
them and carry them aboard.
But at last every decoy was squatting in the crates; the mast had been
stepped, guns laid aboard, luncheon stowed away. Marche set his shoulder
to the stern; the girl sprang aboard, and he followed; the triangular
sail filled, and the boat glided out into the sound, straight into the
glittering lens of the rising sun.
A great winter gull flapped across their bows; in the lee of Starfish
Island, long strings of wild ducks rose like shredded clouds, and,
swarming in the sky, swinging, drifting, sheered eastward, out toward
the unseen Atlantic.
"Bluebills and sprigs," said the girl, resting her elbow on the tiller.
"There are geese on the shoal, yonder. They've come out from Currituck.
Oh, I'm afraid it's to be blue-bird weather, Mr. Marche."
"I'm afraid it is," he assented, smiling. "What do you do in that case,
Miss Herold?"
"Go to sleep in the blind," she admitted, with a faint smile, the first
delicate approach to anything resembling the careless confidence of
camaraderie that had yet come from her.
"See the ducks!" she said, as bunch after bunch parted from the water,
distantly, yet all around them, and, gathering like clouds of dusky
bees, whirled away through the sky until they seemed like bands of smoke
high drifting. Presently she turned and looked back, signaling adieu to
the shore, where her brother lifted his arm in response, then turned
away inland.