Blue-Bird Weather

"That's a mated bird!" she called out to him. "Peg him outside by

himself!"

So Marche pegged out the furious old gander, whose name was Uncle

Dudley, and in a few minutes that dignified and insulted bird, missing

his spouse, began to talk about it.

Every wifely feeling outraged, his spouse replied loudly from the

extreme end of the inner lane, telling her husband, and every duck,

goose, and swan in the vicinity, what she thought of such an inhuman

separation.

Molly laughed, and so did Marche. Duck after duck, goose after goose,

joined indignantly in the conversation. The mallard drakes twisted their

emerald-green heads and began that low, half gurgling, half quacking

conversation in which their mottled brown and gray mates joined with

louder quacks. The geese conversed freely; but the long-necked swans

held their peace, occupied with the problem of picking to pieces the

snaps on their anklets.

"Now," said Molly breathlessly, as the last madly protesting bird had

been stooled, "let's get into the blind as soon as we can, Mr. Marche.

There may be ducks in Currituck still, and every minute counts now."

So Marche towed the dory around to the westward and drew it into a

channel where it might lie concealed under the reeds.

When he came across to the blind he found Molly there, seated on the

plank in the cemented pit behind the screen of reeds and rushes, laying

out for him his cartridges.

There they were, in neat rows on the rail, fives, sixes, and a few of

swanshot, ranged in front of him. And his 12-gauge, all ready, save for

the loading, lay across the pit to his right. So he dropped his booted

feet into the wooden tub where a foot-warmer lay, picked up the gun,

slid a pair of sixes into it, laid it beside him, and turned toward Miss

Herold.

The wool collar of her sweater was turned up about her delicately molded

throat and face. The wild-rose color ran riot in her cheeks, and her

eyes, sky tinted now, were wide open under the dark lashes, and the wind

stirred her hair till it rippled bronze and gold under the edge of her

shooting hood. She, too, was perfectly ready. A cheap, heavy, and rather

rusty gun lay beside her; a heap of cheap cartridges before her.

She turned, and, catching Marche's eyes, smiled adorably, with a slight

nod of comradeship. Then, the smile still faintly curving her lips, she

crossed her legs in the pit, and, warming her hands in the pockets of

her coat, leaned back, resting against the rail behind.