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Burd Alane has had a good quarter of an hour to-day.

His spouse took a brief promenade with him. To be sure, it was during an absence of the flock on the other side of the hedge so that the moral effect of her spasm of wifely loyalty was quite lost upon them. I strongly suspect that she would not have granted anything but a secret interview. What a petty, weak, ignoble character! I really don’t like to think so badly of any fellow-creature as I am forced to think of that politic, time-serving, pusillanimous goose. I believe she laid the egg that produced the idiot gosling!

CHAPTER IX

Here follows the true story of Sir Muscovy Drake, the Lady Blanche, and Miss Malardina Crippletoes.

Phoebe’s flock consisted at first mostly of Brown Mallards, but a friend gave her a sitting of eggs warranted to produce a most beautiful variety of white ducks. They were hatched in due time, but proved hard to raise, till at length there was only one survivor, of such uncommon grace and beauty that we called her the Lady Blanche. Presently a neighbour sold Phoebe his favourite Muscovy drake, and these two splendid creatures by “natural selection” disdained to notice the rest of the flock, but forming a close friendship, wandered in the pleasant paths of duckdom together, swimming and eating quite apart from the others.

In the brown flock there was one unfortunate, misshapen from the egg, quite lame, and with no smoothness of plumage; but on that very account, apparently, or because she was too weak to resist them, the others treated her cruelly, biting her and pushing her away from the food.

One day it happened that the two ducks–Sir Muscovy and Lady Blanche–had come up from the water before the others, and having taken their repast were sitting together under the shade of a flowering currant-bush, when they chanced to see poor Miss Crippletoes very badly used and crowded away from the dish. Sir Muscovy rose to his feet; a few rapid words seemed to pass between him and his mate, and then he fell upon the other drake and the heartless minions who had persecuted the helpless one, drove them far away out of sight, and, returning, went to the corner where the victim was cowering, her face to the wall. He seemed to whisper to her, or in some way to convey to her a sense of protection; for after a few moments she tremblingly went with him to the dish, and hurriedly ate her dinner while he stood by, repulsing the advances of the few brown ducks who remained near and seemed inclined to attack her.

When she had eaten enough Lady Blanche joined them, and they went down the hill together to their favourite swimming-place. After that Miss Crippletoes always followed a little behind her protectors, and thus shielded and fed she grew stronger and well-feathered, though she was always smaller than she should have been and had a lowly manner, keeping a few steps in the rear of her superiors and sitting at some distance from their noon resting-place.

Phoebe noticed after a while that Lady Blanche was seldom to be seen, and Sir Muscovy and Miss Crippletoes often came to their meals without her. The would-be mother refused to inhabit the house Phoebe had given her, and for a long time the place she had chosen for her sitting could not be found. At length the Square Baby discovered her in a most ideal spot. A large boulder had dropped years ago into the brook that fills our duck- pond; dropped and split in halves with the two smooth walls leaning away from each other. A grassy bank towered behind, and on either side of the opening, tall bushes made a miniature forest where the romantic mother could brood her treasures while her two guardians enjoyed the water close by her retreat.