3
And the young couple were comfortable and very happy. But, when she had laid her first egg in the nest, they had a tiff.
He wanted her to go for a little trip with him over the rock, while the egg lay in the nest, and she had no objection, but she did think that he might have shown rather more pleasure at the sight of that fine gray-green egg.
“I am saving up my emotions,” he said, “as befits a man. Come along.”
Then she said, however, that it was out of the question to leave the egg lying like that, with nothing over it. They must cover it with something. She plucked some fine down from under her wings and laid it on the egg. But when she asked him to do the same, he shook his head with decision.
“I am saving up my feathers,” he said. “You will lay four more eggs and my turn will come when you’ve rim out of down. I shall pluck myself bald if it’s for the good of our children.”
“Lord, how he’s romancing!” said auntie, who was standing near and heard all they said. “He’s just like my own husbands. They don’t mean a word of it, but still it does an old heart good to hear them.”
The young wife now accompanied her husband to the beach, where all was life and jollity.
Scores of husbands were there with their wives and all the old gentlemen and ladies who no longer had a nest. They dived and chatted and told funny stories. But the young wife mostly sat apart or talked to the other young wives, who also were in a rather solemn mood. And soon she declared that she must positively lay another egg.
“Come, dear,” she said. “Come, let us go home. There’s a new egg coming.”
“What a misfortune!” said her husband, who was in the midst of a quadrille with a couple of young ducks of the summer before, who were not yet thinking of marriage.
But he went back with her to the nest and she laid her egg. She plucked some more down, while he addressed her in beautiful and touching phrases, and then they went out again, for he simply could not stay at home in the nest.
But they had not gone half-way when she felt another egg coming and told him so.
“You had better stay up there in the nest,” he said, crossly. “This running to and fro does not amuse me and is bad for the children’s health.”
“Won’t you stay with me?” she asked.
“I’ll come and have a look at you as often as I can,” he said.
“And that’s the way you keep the promises you made me!” said she and burst into tears.
“My own darling little wife!” he said. “I can’t help you the least little bit with the eggs. You’ve got to lay them and lay them you must. My work for our dear children and for yourself will begin when the eggs are all laid and you have started hatching them. And then, of course, when the little darlings come out, they will have to be fed and taught how to get on in the world. I am saving up my strength till that time comes, you see. And then I will sit on the eggs, while you go for a nice little trip and play about with the others down below.”
“Did you ever hear the like?” said auntie. “How beautifully he talks! You’ve got a really nice husband.”
And so the young wife went back to the nest alone and laid her third egg. Auntie flew down to the beach with the husband:
“I’ll look after him, dear,” she whispered; “trust me for that.”
And then the fourth egg came and the fifth.
She had plucked all the feathers from her breast that she thought she could spare and placed them in a nice little, mouse-gray heap around the eggs. Then she sat upon them herself and brooded and brooded. At first, from time to time, she went to the edge of the cliff to look down at the beach, where her husband was with the other men and the ladies who had no eggs. But she did this less and less often. She took no food, grew thin and brooded and brooded. Her aunt called every day to have a chat with her.