Blue-Bird Weather

"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.