ngly to his.

"Oh, I beg of you--take all I have," he responded, with effusion.
"But--but how--?"

"Toss," she commanded tersely.

So he tossed what was left of his bread into the air, above the river;
and the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the
wing.

"Thank you very much," she laughed, with a little bow.

Then she crumbled the bread, and began to sprinkle the ground with it;
and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds. Peter was at
liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their
suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the
lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn,
and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees. She was dressed in white,
as always--a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if
you might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of
small soft creases. Two big red roses drooped from her bodice. She wore
a garden-hat, of white straw, with a big daring rose-red bow, under
which the dense meshes of her hair, warmly dark, dimly bright, shimmered
in a blur of brownish gold.

"What vigour, what verve, what health," thought Peter, watching
her, "what--lean, fresh, fragrant health!" And he had, no doubt, his
emotions.

She bestowed her bread crumbs on the birds; but she was able, somehow,
to discriminate mightily in favour of the goldfinches. She would make a
diversion, the semblance of a fling, with her empty right hand; and the
too-greedy sparrows would dart off, avid, on that false lead. Whereupon,
quickly, stealthily, she would rain a little shower of crumbs, from
her left hand, on the grass beside her, to a confiding group of finches
assembled there. And if ever a sparrow ventured to intrude his ruffianly
black beak into this sacred quarter, she would manage, with a kind of
restrained ferocity, to "shoo" him away, without thereby frightening the
finches.

And all the while her eyes laughed; and there was colour in her cheeks;
and there was the forceful, graceful action of her body.

When the bread was finished, she clapped her hands together gently,
to dust the last mites from them, and looked over at Peter, and smiled
significantly.

"Yes," he acknowledged, "you outwitted them very skilfully. You, at any
rate, have no need of a dragon."

"Oh, in default of a dragon, one can do dragon's work oneself," she
answered lightly. "Or, rather, one can make ones