"That will please her, I'm sure," said Gertrude ironically. "Yet I doubt if you get that far. She's so blind, she probably believes him to be as innocent as an egg, and, therefore, won't hear a word against him."
"Gertrude," he replied with dignity, "I am sorry that your prejudices have biased your mind to such an extent. However, I shall, notwithstanding, do what I can to redress this poor hen's wrongs, by encouraging her to defend her rights and to make her husband respect her."
"Why, certainly. Don't let me deter you. If you think you can make a modern female out of a feathered incubator, then by all means go and try it."
"I shall," he said confidently.
Quitting the pond with a bold waggle of his tail (would that human beings could thus shake themselves free of all that lies behind them!), he wriggled sturdily up the bank, and started off for Martha's nest with a magnificent seagoing waddle.
He found the hen sitting on a large brood of eggs. "Good afternoon," he said, bobbing his neck affably.
"Good afternoon," she echoed colorlessly.
"I have come to talk with you as a friend," he began, lowering his voice to an earnest tone, "about something that weighs very deeply on my heart."
She looked at him with a dull, nonplussed expression.
"You see," he continued, becoming a little nervous, "—h'm—where is your husband?"