detest and resist
being driven to theirs. Whether they suffer from insomnia, or nightmare,
or whether they simply prefer the sweet air of liberty (and death) to the
odour of captivity and the coop, I have no means of knowing.

{The pole was not long enough: p21.jpg}

Phoebe stood by one of the duck-ponds, a long pole in her hand, and a
helpless expression in that doughlike countenance of hers, where aimless
contours and features unite to make a kind of facial blur. (What does
the carrier see in it?) The pole was not long enough to reach the ducks,
and Phoebe's method lacked spirit and adroitness, so that it was natural,
perhaps, that they refused to leave the water, the evening being warm,
with an uncommon fine sunset.

{They . . . waddle under the wrong fence: p22.jpg}

I saw the situation at once and ran to meet it with a glow of interest
and anticipation. If there is anything in the world I enjoy, it is
making somebody do something that he doesn't want to do; and if, when
victory perches upon my banner, the somebody can be brought to say that
he ought to have done it without my making him, that adds the
unforgettable touch to pleasure, though seldom, alas! does it happen.
Then ensued the delightful and stimulating hour that has now become a
feature of the day; an hour in which the remembrance of the table-d'hote
dinner at the Hydro, going on at identically the same time, only stirs me
to a keener joy and gratitude.

{Honking and hissing like a bewildered orchestra: p23.jpg}

{Harried and pecked by the big geese: p24.jpg}

The ducks swim round in circles, hide under the willows, and attempt to
creep into the rat-holes in the banks, a stupidity so crass that it
merits instant death, which it somehow always escapes. Then they come
out in couples and waddle under the wrong fence into the lower meadow,
fly madly under the tool-house, pitch blindly in with the sitting hens,
and out again in short order, all the time quacking and squawking,
honking and hissing like a bewildered orchestra. By dint of splashing
the water with poles, throwing pebbles, beating the shrubs at the pond's
edges, "shooing" frantically with our skirts, crawling beneath bars to
head them off, and prodding them from under bushes to urge them on, we
finally get the older ones out of the water and the younger ones into
some sort of relation to their various retreats; but, owing to their lack
of geography, hatred of home, and general recalci