The fish were very kind to-day, and Ransey was making a very good bag. Whenever he had finished fishing in about forty yards of stream, he threw down his rod and trotted off back for Babs, and placed her down about twenty yards ahead of him, fished another forty yards and changed her position again, Bob always following close at the boy’s heels and lying down beside his charge, and permitting himself to be pulled about, and teased, and cuddled, and kissed one moment, and hammered over the nose with that tin whistle the next. Even when Babs tried to gouge his eye out with a morsel of twig, he only lifted his head and licked her face till, half-blinded, she had to drop the stick and tumble on her back.
“You’s a funny dog, Bob,” she said; “’oor tisses is so lough (rough).”
Of course they were. He meant them to be, for Bob couldn’t afford to lose an eye.
I think the Admiral enjoyed himself quite as much as any one. He chose a bit of the stream for himself where the bank was soft, and there he waded and fished for goodness only knows what—beetles, minnows, tiny frogs, anything alive and easy to swallow.
I don’t think, however, that the Admiral was a very good Judge of his swallowing capabilities. That neck of his was so very, very long, and though distensible enough on the whole, sometimes he encountered difficulties that it was almost impossible to surmount. Tadpoles slid down easily enough, so did flies and other tiny insects; but a too-big frog, if invited to go down head-foremost, often had a disagreeable way of throwing his hind-legs out at right angles to the entrance of the Admiral’s gullet. This placed the Admiral in a somewhat awkward predicament. No bird can look his best with its beak held forcibly agape, and the two legs of a disorderly frog sticking out one at each side.
The crane would hold his head in the air and consider for a bit, then lower his face against the bank and rub one leg in, then change cheeks and rub the other in; but lo! while doing so, leg number one would be kicked out again, and by the time that was replaced out shot leg number two.
It was very annoying and ridiculous. So the Admiral would step cautiously on to the green bank, and stride very humbly down the stream to Ransey Tansey, with his neck extended and his head on a level with his shoulders.
“You see the confounded fix I’m in,” he would say, looking up at his master with one wonderfully wise eye.
Then Ransey would pull out the frog, and the little rascal would hop away, laughing to himself apparently.
“Crok—crok—cray—ay!” the Admiral would cry, and go joyfully back to his fishing-ground.