“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.
4
One day, the husband came and sat down by the nest. He looked very spruce with his green neck and his bright eyes.