Curling up one foot under her, she turned so that she could face Leon. When she was settled to her liking, she began her tale which she emphasized now and then by nodding her head, or smacking her lips, with an air of relishing the gloomy details.
“Well, once, ever ’n ever so long ago, there was a duck and a squan, and one day they were sitting on the bank in the sun to dry their feet, and the duck said, ‘I love you; do you love me?’ and the squan said, ‘No, I won’t,’ and the duck said, ‘I’ll make you.’ So he ran at the squan, and the squan ran away and jumped into the lake. The duck ran after her and, first thing he knew, he had tumbled in, right head first over heels. They began swimming round and round after each other, and pretty soon the squan was tired, so she turned into a crocodile with great, long teeth and claw-nails, and climbed out on the bank. Then the duck turned himself into another crocodile and went out after her; but when he found her, she wasn’t there, for she made herself back into a squan and was clear off in the water. You see, she was quicker ’n he was. He didn’t stop to change, but went after her, fast as he could go, and when he came up to her, he pulled out the carving-knife and cut her into four pieces. ‘There,’ he said, ‘now I’ve killed you; that’s too bad.’ But the pieces sank down to the bottom and when they hit the mud down there, they all grew together again, so she could swim up. She came up, just as quick, and pulled the carving-knife out of his hand, and she took the carving-knife, and stuck the points in and made little dents all over him. So he died, and the squan pulled three pink feathers out of his tail, to show she’d killed him, and then she went home to her little chickens. But she forgot the carving-knife, and when she saw her chickens, she was so glad, that she dropped the carving-knife right down on top of them and cut all their heads off, and so they were dead as could be, every one of them; and when she knew they were dead and she had killed them, she felt so badly that she went right off and was drowned, and that’s all there is about them.”
“Where’d you get all this story, Gyp?” inquired Leon, much impressed by the tragic end of the tale.
“Out of my think-box,” responded Gyp, as she slipped down from the sofa and ran to the door, to meet her father and her cousin.
“Well, my boy; how goes it?” asked the doctor, as he moved up a chair and sat down beside Leon. “Has it been a long morning to you?”
“Oh, papa, we’ve had a real good time,” interrupted Gyp, climbing on his knee and taking his face between her hands, to enforce his attention. “We’ve been telling stories, and Leon has been telling me about an old man that lives alone with a black canary and smokes pop corn; and please wont you take me to see him?”
“I wasn’t talking to you, chatterbox,” said her father, laughing. “How is the foot, Leon?”
“All right—”
“Won’t you, papa?” Gyp insisted.
“Won’t I what, you monkey?”