One day, a charming young eider-drake came and sat beside the two ladies on the ice.
“If he proposes to you, accept him,” whispered auntie. “He has the greenest neck I’ve seen for many a year.”
“If only he would!” said the young girl.
And he did.
After sitting for a while and talking of indifferent things, as long as etiquette required—and etiquette does not demand half as much of eider-duck as it does of men—he asked the young lady if she would be his wife. He went on to talk of birds’-nests and cliffs and dear little eggs and so on, but she stopped him:
“Yes,” she said; and so they were engaged.
He was awfully eloquent and swore to be faithful to her all his life and to build a nest for her and to sit on the eggs for her and to feed the children from morn till night. She nodded and could not speak for sheer happiness.
“Every word that he says is a lie,” said auntie. “But, lord, how charming it is!”
“It’s terrible!” said the sparrow and the gull. “Such a dear young lady!”
“Fiddle!” said auntie. “We all have to go through it. My seven husbands all said the same and not one of them kept his promise. But they were charming, for all that. Only they had not such green necks as this one. He’s splendid. I could fall in love with him myself.”