SCRAMBLED EGGS

By LAWTON MACKALL

With illustrations by
OLIVER HERFORD

CINCINNATI
STEWART & KIDD COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1920, by
STEWART & KIDD COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
Copyright in England

TO
Orson Lowell
DELIGHTFULEST OF
FRIENDS

CONTENTS

I

SCRAMBLED EGGS

Eustace was a thorough gentleman. There was candor in his quack, and affability in his waddle; and underneath his snowy down beat a pure and sympathetic heart. In short, he was a most exemplary duck.

Or rather, to be more correct, a drake: for he was a husband, and the proud father of several eggs.

He admired his wife tremendously. "Gertrude," he said to her one day, as he squatted beside the nest in his burdock home, "you are certainly a wonderful female to have laid those eggs. I can't tell you how I respect you for what you have done."

"That's all very well," she replied, preening herself coolly, "but I notice you never offer to sit on them."

"That's all very well," she replied, preening, "but I notice you never offer to sit on them."

Eustace was taken aback. "Surely you wouldn't expect me to do that!" he said.

"I don't see why not. I've been sitting here for over two weeks, and now it seems only fair that you should take your turn."

"But, my dear duckling," he protested, "it would never do! It would look unmanly. Think how Clarence would crow over me!"

"That's it!" she said scornfully. "That's the way it is with you drakes! You haven't the spunk to do what you ought to, for fear some old libertine of a rooster will make fun of you!"

"But, darling ..."

"Oh you males! You expect a female to give up everything for motherhood, and yet you aren't willing, or are afraid, to do anything to make her life endurable!"

"But I should think you would be happy, with such beautiful eggs as these," he ventured in a conciliatory tone. "Look at Martha: she seems quite blissful over hers, and yet they aren't nearly as large or as white."

This allusion had just the wrong effect. "Now don't try to set up that stupid hen as an example for me!" she snapped indignantly. "All her life she's done nothing but lay eggs and sit on them. And what is the result?—she hasn't an idea under her comb, no, not even sense enough to know that Clarence is carrying on disgracefully with other chickens."

Eustace, feeling uncomfortable, tried to interpose a pacifying remark, but she did not give him a chance.

"It's females like that who have kept our sex in subjection. But I'm not one of them, let me tell you. I believe in a communal incubator."

"Yes, dear,—such a thing might be very convenient, if it were once established,—though I fear it would lack the personal touch. But for the time being, since there isn't any communal incubator, your duty is to sit on your eggs."

"My duty! How about my duty to myself? Don't you suppose that my nature demands any higher fulfillment than this?" Rustling her feathers petulantly, she got up.

"Stop!" he cried. "You shall not desert our eggs! I have acceded to your other modernisms—your coop-reform theories, your sex-education for ducklings; I have even come out openly for the single standard of morality;—but this thing I will not tolerate."

"You'd like me to be an insipid nestwarmer like Martha, wouldn't you? Well, I won't, now. I intend to know life!" And, with a defiant waggle of her tail, she departed, to undertake research in distant puddles.

Eustace felt stunned. He was so dazed that he allowed a luscious black beetle, that crawled past within easy range, to proceed on its way ungobbled. Poor, forlorn eggs, he thought, children of an unnatural mother, they were too young to realize that they had been forsaken!

Pity overcame his pride: he sidled over and sat on them. They felt rather cosy and comforting, pressing thus snugly against his paternal breast. He spread out his feathers lovingly.

He would sit here for a while, he thought, as he craned his neck this way and that to be sure that no one was looking,—yes, he would sit here till Gertrude returned, and then he would do what he could to make things up again. After all, there was a good deal in what she had said. She had had a hard time, sitting still for so many days, and he ought to be willing to....

"Er-ur-er-ur-errr!" crowed an insolent voice, startlingly near by.

Clarence! Eustace hopped off the eggs as though they were live coals. Hastily snapping up something from the ground, he began gulping it assiduously, with much show of hunger. But his success was not great, for it was a rubber washer and proved to be more pliable than swallowable.

Clarence came swaggering up with, "Hello, Eustace, old game bird! Say, did you see a good-looking blonde pullet go past here?"

Eustace laid down the washer and answered stiffly, "No."

"Well, you needn't act so sanctimoniously about it," said the rooster with a leer. "You may fool your wife with your righteous air, but you can't gull me!" He gave Eustace a sly dig in the wishbone.

"Clarence," said the other with dignity, "there are some things which, I fear, we shall never regard in the same light."

The rooster burst into a jeering gurgle, flapping his wings with merriment. "Oh, I forgot,—you're one of those single standard cranks. Well, no wonder you're henpecked!" Just then he caught sight of the nest. "Been sitting on the eggs, like a well-trained husband?"

"No. Certainly not!" stammered Eustace, overcome with mortification.

Clarence, not to be hoodwinked with such a feeble denial, only chortled the more scoffingly. He would have continued his gibes but for the sudden appearance of the blonde pullet. "Ah, there she is!" he exclaimed abruptly, and strutted off after her.

The frame of mind in which Eustace now found himself was not a pleasant one. "I suppose the old scoundrel will tell everybody he caught me sitting on the eggs!" he reflected. "And how those gossipy Guinea fowls will carry on when they hear it!" He picked up the washer again and chewed it malevolently—nyap, nyap, nyap, nyap—ulp!—out it flipped. Oh, what was the use of anything anyhow? Casting one look at the eggs that had been the innocent authors of his undoing, he waddled sadly away and buried his dejected head in the depths of the frog-pond.

When, several hours later, he returned home, he found Gertrude already there. She was in the best of spirits. "What do you think," she said breathlessly, "my theories are working out!"

But he hardly heard her. He was staring blankly at the nest. It was empty. The beautiful white eggs were gone.

"What have you done with our poor unhatched children?" he gasped.

"Nothing," she replied calmly. "I was just going to tell you: they have been taken to the communal incubator."

"What!—Who took them?"

"I don't know."

"Then how do you know where they are gone?"

"By intuition, you stupid. How else should you expect me to know?—It just had to come. I've been predicting it all along."

"I only hope nothing serious has happened to them," he said earnestly.

"Nonsense!" she replied. Then she went on triumphantly: "Think what it will mean for them. They will be hatched scientifically, eugenically. And when our little girls grow up—for some of them may be girls—they will be free women; they will enjoy the happiness of motherhood without its drudgery."

Eustace did not share her enthusiasm. He felt anxious and lonesome.

A week later, the whole barnyard was agog with the news that Martha had hatched out a brood of ducklings.

Gertrude veiled her disappointment over there being really no communal incubator, by remarking sarcastically to her husband, "Well, a hot-nurse is the next best thing, and Martha makes an excellent one. It's all she's capable of."

"But do you think people will understand?" asked Eustace uneasily.

"All who keep abreast of the times will."

But gossip was rife. The Guinea hens started it, jabbering most scurrilously; the geese prated of it to the turkeys, who held up their feathers in genteel horror at the thought of such a scandal; and a pair of puritanical doves, looking down disapprovingly from a high gable, puffed themselves out with self-righteousness and murmured thanks be to heaven that they had always kept aloof from everybody else.

When the news reached Clarence, he left off flirting with his newest affinity and stalked home in a towering rage. He found Martha sitting on a batch of eggs, while round about her pattered the furry little ducklings.

"Faithless wife!" he cried. "Go! Never let me see your beak again! And take your web-footed brats with you!"

The hen was in a pitiable flutter of distress. "I am innocent," she clucked. "I have been true to you. I really don't know how it happened."

"Hah! Do you expect me to believe that, you English sparrow?"

"Revile me and peck me, if you have stopped loving me,—but, oh, don't drive me away from my eggs."

"Go!" he reiterated, shaking his comb at her. "You're not fit to have the custody of them!"

The poor flustered thing got up, all atremble. She called despondently to her foster children, who toddled after her as she departed.

"Now for that villain of a drake!" thought Clarence, and he set out in search of Eustace.

The father of the ducklings was at that moment in the middle of the pond, regaling himself upon a lucky find of frog's-egg tapioca. As he swallowed the succulent globules his neck writhed in contortions of joy.

"Hah! you guzzling hypocrite! you hawk in dove's clothing!" cried a voice.

Eustace looked up. There on the bank was Clarence, pacing to and fro in a fury.

"Come out on shore, you sleek betrayer, you whited sepulcher!"

The full terror of his situation dawned on him. Here was he, despite his conscientious integrity, accused of a most heinous sin,—and, worst of all, accused by Clarence!

Interested spectators began to assemble on the bank. Eustace became a center of attention. And the rooster continued to rail and threaten.

"Oh, if I could only get at you!—you with your single standard!"

That was a bombshell. "Shut your bill, you liar!" shouted Eustace, as, with a vigorous kick of his foot, he wheeled away from the tapioca and started for the shore.

Gertrude, arriving on the scene with a flying scuttle, beheld her hero paddling resolutely to land. How proud she was to see him face that big prize-fighter! But, determined that they should not come to blows, she rushed up behind Clarence and honked in his ear: "I laid those eggs, you blustering fool. Martha only sat on them. She would sit on anything."

"What—what's that?" asked the startled rooster.

"Martha would sit on anything," repeated the Amazon. "I can prove it.—Stand back, Eustace!—Here she comes now. I'll make her sit on that stone." She indicated a smooth white pebble that was somewhat oval in shape.

As she spoke, the forlorn hen drew near, followed by the ducklings. They trailed along after her like a train of guilt.

"Shameless creature!" muttered Clarence.

But she, keeping her eyes dejectedly on the ground, did not notice him, nor anyone else.

Gertrude stationed herself by the pebble. As Martha passed by, she said, in a tone of politeness, "Pardon me, but you dropped an egg."

Martha stopped. "Oh, did I?" she said gratefully. "Thank you, thank you for telling me. I'm so bewildered I hardly know what I'm doing—Ah, the poor little thing is all cold!" she added, sitting compassionately upon the pebble; while, unobserved by her, the ducklings tobogganed down the bank into the water.

Gertrude eyed the rooster witheringly. "Whom are you going to fight with about this egg?" she demanded.

"Well, I'll be fricasseed!" said Clarence. Then he turned to the drake. "Eustace, I apologize. And I don't mind saying that you have a remarkably clever wife."

"She's the most wonderful female in feathers!" assented Eustace fervently.

"However," added the rooster, "there are compensations about having a dull one." For among the crowd of onlookers his eye had just fallen upon a little bantam lady whom he had never seen before.

II

HIS COOP IN ORDER

If there was one thing that the sympathetic heart of Eustace could not endure, it was the spectacle of abused virtue.

"Gertrude," quacked he thoughtfully to his help-meet, as they were cruising one day on the frog-pond, "I am really distressed about Martha. Her husband is acting shamelessly."

Gertrude shrugged her wings. "Well, what else could you expect?" she said. "The silly hen has brought it all on herself by being so humble and simpleminded."

"I'm afraid she has," admitted Eustace. "And that is the sad part about it; for she's really such a fine female—so unselfish, so devoted to her nest."

"Yes, and such a fool. She's never taken any care of her personal appearance, or tried to be Clarence's intellectual companion; and now, when she's getting old (she must be nearly five) and has lost the figure she had when she was a pullet, it's no wonder that she bores him. You can't expect to hold a rooster's affections with a mere egg record."

"I suppose you're right. And yet I'm awfully sorry for her. It's common talk at the haystack that he has just added another affinity to the three he had already."

"What! Do you mean that bold-faced speckled creature who was uncrated only two days ago?"

"Yes."

"The hussy! She tried yesterday to shoulder me away from the refreshment can, right before everybody; but I gave her a look that let her know I was ready to tweak her comb off, and she thought better of it."

"I'll warrant she did!" assented Eustace admiringly. He knew Gertrude could take care of herself in any situation. "But what can we do about poor Martha?"

"Nothing that I can see. I confess I have quite lost interest in her since she refused to attend our conference on Free Puddles for the Public. But as for that brazen-beaked speckled thing, the next time I...."

"She refused to attend our conference on Free Puddles for the Public."

"But, darling, don't you think it is our duty, as citizens, to rescue Martha from the shame of her present position? We mustn't act pharisaically toward her, the way the swans do, just because she is afraid of the water and can't walk gracefully. It isn't right to evade the issue by saying, 'Oh, what better morality could you expect among chickens?' No; it is for us of the white-feathered race to uplift and enlighten those of the colored-feathered race, so that when Death comes chopping at our neck, we shall have amounted to something in this barnyard."

Gertrude was softened. "I believe you're right," she said, after a pause. "You have such a noble, high-minded way of looking at things! Yes, you had better go to Clarence and talk this over with him, fowl to fowl, and make him realize the great wrong he is committing."

"I've tried it already—several times. But it's no use. He only laughs, and says that as long as Martha puts up with his ways he has no intention of changing them. So the only thing to be done is for you to go to see Martha and...."

"I go to see Martha?"

"Yes—as a friend."

"She's no friend of mine! I'll never forget the way she acted when I invited her to that meeting. When I said to her that it was the duty of every one to attend, she had the effrontery to tell me, very pointedly, that a female's place was on the nest."

"Yes, yes, I know, dear. Yet I should think that, just this once, you might...."

"No, I won't. She'd as likely as not say something insulting about my quacking in public."

"Very well, then," said Eustace in an aggrieved tone. "I'll go talk to her."

"You will? And what will you say to her?"

"I don't know exactly; but I'll try to bring her to a full realization of the position she's in, and then...."

"That will please her, I'm sure," said Gertrude ironically. "Yet I doubt if you get that far. She's so blind, she probably believes him to be as innocent as an egg, and, therefore, won't hear a word against him."

"Gertrude," he replied with dignity, "I am sorry that your prejudices have biased your mind to such an extent. However, I shall, notwithstanding, do what I can to redress this poor hen's wrongs, by encouraging her to defend her rights and to make her husband respect her."

"Why, certainly. Don't let me deter you. If you think you can make a modern female out of a feathered incubator, then by all means go and try it."

"I shall," he said confidently.

Quitting the pond with a bold waggle of his tail (would that human beings could thus shake themselves free of all that lies behind them!), he wriggled sturdily up the bank, and started off for Martha's nest with a magnificent seagoing waddle.

He found the hen sitting on a large brood of eggs. "Good afternoon," he said, bobbing his neck affably.

"Good afternoon," she echoed colorlessly.

"I have come to talk with you as a friend," he began, lowering his voice to an earnest tone, "about something that weighs very deeply on my heart."

She looked at him with a dull, nonplussed expression.

"You see," he continued, becoming a little nervous, "—h'm—where is your husband?"

Martha drew herself up in modest alarm. "Sir," she said, "I don't know where my husband is at this moment; but if what you have to say can't be said whether he is present or not, then I don't wish to hear it at all."

"I beg your pardon," stammered Eustace hastily. "You misunderstood me. It is about him that I wished to speak. I—I merely wanted to say that you have my sincerest sympathy, and that I am ready to do all I can to help you redress your wrongs."

"Your sympathy? Help me redress my wrongs?" she exclaimed, divided between astonishment and perturbation. "What do you mean?"

"Madam," he replied with knightly gallantry, "I respect you for endeavoring to shield your husband. But my admiration for you only makes me regret the more his—er—his neglect of you."

"My husband neglect me!" Ruffling up still more, she glanced for reassurance at her eggs.

"I refer—since you compel me to speak bluntly—to his attentions to other females."

"Sir, you forget yourself! How dare you say such things to me!" She burst into tears.

Eustace was taken aback. "Why, really, I...."

"The best husband in all the barnyard!" she sobbed, wiping her eyes on a leaf. "So loving to me every time I see him!" Then, in a sudden cackle of rage, she cried, "Leave me, miscreant! With all your guile, you will never be able to alienate my affections from him!"

That was enough for Eustace. He went.

Gertrude was unable to elicit from him any very definite account of this interview, but from his disgruntled taciturnity and from one or two things which he let slip, she made her own inferences as to what had taken place. "It never pays to offer your sympathy unless you know it's wanted," she observed sagely. "Remember the time you tried to console Mrs. Swan for her children's not being white."

But the next day it was her turn to be astonished. As she and Eustace were trimming the shrubs in front of their burdock home, who should appear but Martha, with disheveled feathers and a woe-be-gone look.

At sight of her Eustace lost any rancor that had lingered in his breast from yesterday. "What is the matter?" he asked solicitously, as he hurried forward to meet her.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" gasped Martha hysterically. "Forgive me for what I said to you—the things you told me have proved only too true!" Here she broke down entirely.

Eustace, unaccustomed to such displays of emotion on the part of the weaker sex, turned an S. O. S. glance in the direction of Gertrude; but she, keeping scornfully aloof, ignored this call for assistance.

"After you left me," continued the hen, when she was able to regain her speech, "I couldn't help thinking over what you had said, and dreadful suspicions began to enter my mind, so that last night I didn't sleep at all. My head tossed and squirmed under my wing all night long."

Again she broke down, and Eustace felt more helpless than ever.

"When Clarence came to see me to-day, I asked him some pointed questions. He tried to evade them and change the subject, by complimenting me on having just laid another egg. But I could see he was hiding something, and when he went away I got up from my nest and followed him. As I turned the corner of that clump of bushes over yonder, I saw ... I saw my husband—in the act of embracing ... a speckled female!" Uttering these last words, she keeled over, and would have fallen had not Eustace stayed her with his outstretched pinion.

"Bring some smelling-roots!" he called excitedly. "Quick, some garlic!"

When the hen had been restored to consciousness, she thanked Eustace and his wife most humbly, and said, "I have come to you because you offered to help me. Tell me what I must do."

"Get a divorce," said Gertrude firmly.

"Oh no, no!" exclaimed the hen. "I couldn't live without Clarence. What I want is to have him all to myself."

At this confession of weakness, Gertrude, raising her bill in air in token of supreme disgust, waddled off to the pond, to attend a regatta of water-bugs.

But Eustace, believing that Martha's whole happiness was at stake, faced the matter seriously. He felt that this was a golden opportunity for doing her good. "You must make your husband respect you and feel the need of your companionship," he said. "You must share all his interests. If he has a passion for hunting which leads him to stalk grasshoppers or go coursing after a pack of beetles, then you must take up hunting and join in his sport. If, on the other hand, he has a hobby for collecting, and goes about picking up pieces of old china, then you, also, must become a connoisseur in antiques."

As the hen listened to this advice, she blinked in a befuddled manner. "But what would become of my eggs?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't mean that you are to absent yourself from your home when maternal duties require your presence there. Far from it. You are to reign there as queen of his heart, enthroned on your nest."

Martha sighed wistfully.

"Even at those times when the cares of motherhood keep you within the coop," he went on, carried away with his theme, "you can still make yourself your husband's intellectual companion, by discussing with him such topics as the political betterment of the barnyard, the abolition of capital punishment for obesity, the restriction of overcrowding in bee tenements, and the regulation of food distribution by the Pan-Gastronomic Association. From talking over these things with you, he will learn the value of your opinion, and will come to find continual inspiration in your society."

The hen listened in awed silence. At last, heartened by his eloquence, she said, "I'll try to be that kind of wife. It will be hard at first, but perhaps I'll get used to it."

Accordingly, the next time Clarence came strutting up to her, with swishing feathers and a gurgle of "Hello, wifie dear!" she answered serenely, "How do you do, Clarence? I want to have a talk with you."

"Huh!" said he in surprise. Drawing himself up and holding one foot meditatively in the air, he cocked his head sidewise to have a good look at her.

"I have been thinking things over very seriously," she continued, in the same tone, "and from now on I intend to be a very different sort of wife to you. In the past I have not shared your interests as I should have; but in future I shall make myself your companion in everything. I shall keep informed on all topics of the day, such as the organization of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Insects and the report of the Vice Commission on conditions in the rabbit pen, so as to be able to discuss them with you and give you the benefit of my opinions."

"Say, what's the matter with you?" he demanded. "I'll be plucked if I ever saw you this way before!"

Emboldened by having disconcerted him, she went on to make good her advantage. "And after this I shall always...."

"Sorry, but I'll have to be going. Have an important engagement." He started to move away.

"With whom?"

Startled at the audacity of her question, he inquired ill-humoredly, "Why do you ask?"

"Because I am your wife, and, therefore, take an interest in everything you do."

"You do, do you?" He looked her square in the profile, then lowered his head and pecked thoughtfully at a weed; then he said, "Well, since you are so curious to know—I'm going cricketing with Jim, the turkey."

"Then I'll go with you. You and I together can catch them twice as fast as he can."

"Look here, now—this is no hen party!" he rasped.

"I'm not so sure," she retorted, stirred more and more by jealous suspicions. "It may be a speckled hen party!"

Clarence gave an involuntary start. Then, falling into a quivering rage, he clawed the ground with fury. "Just for that, now, it shall be a speckled hen party! Good-bye!"

"Wait a moment, Clarence!" she called abjectly, as he stalked away. "Ah, don't leave me!"

"Green-eyed termagant!" he gargled, as a parting thrust, and headed straight for the clump of bushes where waited his affinity.

Two days later, when Eustace was expressing to Gertrude his gratification over having converted Martha to modernism, he was suddenly struck dumb by the appearance of the hen herself. That disconsolate female, with every feather ruffled the wrong way, had a shaky manner and a wild look in her eye that gave promise of an unpleasant scene.

"Why, what is the matter?" he inquired nervously, as she drew near and fixed her glance upon him.

"A pretty question for you to ask, you breaker-up of homes!" Eustace took a step backward.

"Monster!—to poison my mind against my husband! I hope you're satisfied, now that you've wrecked my happiness!"

At this point, Gertrude, who had witnessed Martha's first outburst with scornful composure, thought it time to intervene. "Come, come—control yourself!" she said sternly. "Now tell me what's the matter. Have you had a quarrel with Clarence?"

"Yes," gulped the hen. "Your husband made me do it."

"Why, I...."

"Keep quiet, Eustace! Let me manage her. Did he go away and leave you?"

The hen nodded.

"And he hasn't been back since?"

She shook her head.

"And now you want him to come back?"

"Oh yes—yes!" she moaned. "I'll let him have his way in everything, and never leave my nest, and never ask any more questions!"

"Hear that, Eustace?"

He did, in blank silence.

"Then go repeat it to Clarence, and bring him here at once," she commanded.

He hesitated, and was about to speak.

"Don't stop to talk. Hurry!"

He did as he was told.

Swinging sharply around the corner of the clump of bushes, he collided with the very fowl he was seeking.

"Why, hullo, old Single Standard!" exclaimed the rooster jocularly. "Whither hurried hence?"

"Ah! I'm glad I've found you," said Eustace earnestly. "Martha, your wife, is in great distress of mind. She wants you to come home, and promises she'll never ask any more questions."

"Really? Then you're my friend for life!" As they started off together, he continued, "You'll have to forgive me, old sport—I didn't see it at first, but you certainly were far-sighted to put her up to that 'modern female' nonsense. The truth is, until you did this I was afraid she might some day get on to me, and that I'd never hear the end of it; but now, since she's learned her lesson, I'll have her right where I want her. She knows she can't afford to ruffle the only rooster in the barnyard."

They walked on for a while in silence. Eustace, toddling dazedly, could find no utterance for the thoughts in his mind.

"You know," said Clarence reflectively, "I'll be glad to see Martha again. I'm getting a bit tired of that speckled minx. She's beginning to nag me with 'Why do you love me?' and 'How much do you love me?' questions."

"Clarence," said Eustace, finding speech at last, "I had a very different purpose in mind when I counseled Martha as I did."

The rooster cocked his head quizzically. "So you wanted to reform my coophold, did you?"

"Yes," answered Eustace, in deep earnest.

Clarence exploded into a prolonged guffaw. "Whoopee!" he gurgled, stamping around and shaking his feathers. "Say, old bird, you've got lovely ideas, all right—but you don't understand hens. You're quaxotic."

III

BEYOND THE PALING

Eustace waddled stanchly in the path of virtue. Despite the ill success of his attempt to set Clarence's coop in order, he still pursued his crusade against plural doting.

The unregenerate rooster continued to chaff him.

"Ah there, old top-knot!" Clarence would gurgle. "How's our bright little uplifter to-day? Still busily uplifting?"

But the thrust that got Eustace in the pin feathers was:

"I know why you're such a model drake,—it's because your wife is the only duckess in the barnyard."

"Not at all!" he replied. "The principles for which I stand are absolute. They would be the same if there were a hundred duckesses besides Gertrude!"

"Even a hundred pretty ones?"

"Certainly!"

Clarence chuckled.

"For all your noble principles, I wouldn't trust you with a wooden decoy! No, old angel-wings, I.... Look! as I live, a bewitching broiler! What elegantly slender drumsticks she has! I'll have to make her acquaintance."

Forgetting all about Eustace, he scrambled out of the woodpile (where this conversation was held), and stalked forward jauntily to meet the new arrival.

"Are you looking for anyone?" he inquired gallantly.

"No, I'm a stranger. I just arrived by the latest crate."

"Ah, I see. So you're one of this week's débutantes.—Then may I have the honor of showing you about?"

"You're very kind."

And off they strolled down the alley of tin cans known as Lover's Lane.

Eustace watched them sadly.

"So young and tender!" he thought. "Such chick-like innocence!" The wickedness of the world appalled him.

Hearing an unfamiliar voice, he looked up. Like a queenly galleon swaying from side to side, there approached a snowy, rounded whiteness. The paddling feet seemed scarcely to leave the ground. A golden-webbed goddess!

Eustace was spellbound.

She, all unconscious, continued to approach, caroling little toot-like honks. There was a soft rasp in her voice that thrilled him to the gizzard.

Seeing Eustace, she paused. Their eyes met. Then, with a pretty turn of her head, she looked at him out of the other eye.

"Who are you?" he said, as though in a dream.

"I am Phyllis," she answered simply.

"What a beautiful name!"

"And yours?"

"Eustace."

After a moment of silence, he asked:

"Where did you come from?"

She sighed.

"From a far-distant barnyard. I was kidnapped."

"Kidnapped!"

"Yes, snatched away from my mother and sisters."

"But was there no one to defend you?"

She shook her tail mournfully. A glistening tear coursed down her lovely beak.

"There, little bird, don't cry!" he said sympathetically, smoothing down her soft feathers.

"I was subjected to the most cruel indignities," she murmured.... "I, who had always been treated with particular care and regaled with special dishes of mush!"

"Oh!" he exclaimed, his blood boiling at the thought, "If only I had been there!" He clenched his pinions.

Smiling gratefully amid her tears, she quacked:

"You are very comforting."

Eustace's heart beat faster.

"I was lonely and homesick," she continued, "but your sympathy makes me forget everything."

"Phyllis!"

His crop heaved.

"Now I am not even sorry!"

"Really? Do you really mean that?"

"Yes. For in that other barnyard there were no drakes as high-minded and chivalrous as you."

High-minded! Chivalrous! How those words singed him! Dazedly he awoke from his wild dream.

"I ... I am not what you think I am," he stammered, conscience-stricken. "I am unworthy. I forgot myself. Forgive me ... I ... I am a married bird!"

And he fled, wobbling rather than waddling, from her presence.

In the solitude of the dim crypt under the veranda he pondered over what had happened. He was contrite, humbled, thoroughly ashamed of himself. As he listened to the ominous rumble of rocking chairs overhead, he felt that the Powers Above knew and were displeased.

And yet he could not free himself from the spell of the enchantress. Her image haunted him,—the dark eyes and radiant bill, the softly undulating neck, the downy complexion, the beautifully-rounded form, the feet that tapered exquisitely toward the heel....

Oppressed by the consciousness of sin, and, at the same time, inflamed by his guilty infatuation, Eustace could not endure being alone a moment longer. He decided to go home. It would be hard to look Gertrude in the beak ... but he would have to; for he needed her spiritual influence. Communion with her strong nature would calm him.

Toddling home moodily, he arrived just as his wife was on the point of leaving.

"Where are you going?" he said.

(How bony she looked to-day!)

"To the mass meeting at the haystack."

"What mass meeting?"

"You don't mean to tell me you've forgotten!"

"Oh, I remember now. This is the day of your rally." But she was not satisfied.

"I must say, you take a fine interest in my work!" she exclaimed caustically. "Why, you act as though you didn't care whether I raised the funds for that laying-in hospital or not!"

"I do, dear. But to-day ... I ... I don't feel well. I have a headache."

"I'm sorry.—But hurry and come along, or you'll be late."

The thought of facing that gabbling assemblage was revolting to him.

"I don't think I'll go."

"What!"

"I believe I'll stay home.—I came here to have a talk with you, Gertrude. I need your spiritual help."

"I'm awfully sorry, then, that you didn't come a little sooner,—for you know how glad I always am to discuss anything that is on your mind. If you had only...."

"But couldn't you stay with me just a little while?"

"My dear Eustace, you seem to forget that I have to preside at that meeting. How could I stay with you? Besides, this whole idea of endowing a free nest-box is mine, and I intend to see it carried through."

She started off.

"But, Gertrude ..." he protested.

She paused, with an expression of impatience, and said:

"Oh, well, I'll be late, then. What is it?"

"Gertrude ... I just wanted to talk with you ... and be with you. I...."

"Do hurry!"

The words stuck in his gullet.

"Well, I can't wait here all day, you know!"

"Gertrude ..."

"Sorry, but I'll have to see you some other time. Good-bye!" And she hastened away to her meeting.

Eustace gazed after her stonily.

"You might have saved me—if you had cared!"

He had craned out to her for help, and she had deliberately sidled away from him.

"Hah!" he quacked bitterly. "What difference does it make! What does anything matter! Hah! I flap my wings at the world!"

He was becoming a queer duck.

Casting one farewell look at his home, he fled. Beyond the outermost paling of the barnyard he went, on into the uncharted wilds of the cow pasture. He waddled blindly.

As he entered a grove of cat-tails, there was a stifled quack. A snowy apparition started up from the couch of reeds where it had been squatting.

"You!" cried Eustace.

She returned his gaze mutely.

"How ... how did you get here?" he asked.

"The cold-heartedness I met with was more than I could bear. It drove me out. Even you, the only living fowl who spoke to me ... even you...."

"Ah, can't you understand!"

"Yes, I understand ... only too well. Let's not talk of it.—Tell me, how is it that you are here?"

"I, too, am an exile."