Anne picked up a clod and threw it into the pond. The duck merely turned upside down and became a simple cone in the water with three small feathers in the apex. The attitude had a suggestion of insult.
Nannie beat the branch up and down on the surface of the pond, muttering words under her breath which, had they reached her mistress, would have done her no good. The effect it had was that of disquieting the others, and they began to steal away across the grass in a solemn string, protest in every line of their feathers and every movement of their ungainly feet. The mallard looked after them for a moment and began to swim round and round the pool.
“I have no more time to waste,” said Anne Walters impatiently; “you had better call Williams; I see him in the garden.”
George was very cheerful; he was whistling at his work, and he had a pleasant sense of things being all right. The clouds rode along over his head, white masses of packed snow, cut sharp against the blue, and steering their course through the endless ether like great galleons advancing, unconquered and unconquerable. A lark was losing itself in a tremor of melody, a little vanishing spot. It struck him that the world was good.
He had seen Mary once or twice since the fair, and, though his heart burned within him at keeping silence from the words he might not speak, he felt he was gaining ground; at least, he had got her respect again, and he had seen, entering the shop a few days since, a look of unmistakable pleasure in her face as she greeted him. Yes, things were looking up, and the garden, into which he had put so many hours of steady work, was beginning to repay him.
George was in his element in a garden, though he was himself unconscious of the fact. He had an intense sympathy with growth and life, vegetable and animal, and a large sense of protectorship. As he paused a moment, looking critically at a lush corner where the scarlet-runners had engulfed the fence, he might have stood for the modern version of the original Adam, the natural culmination of the Spirit of Life, moving, not on the waters, but on the fields. All he wanted was Eve; Eve, who, at that moment, was standing in a similar environment, behind the little stack of green vegetables piled on the counter before her. Her surroundings were a little more complicated, that was all, but when were a woman’s otherwise?
Williams left the garden at Nannie’s call, and she watched him with a sour face as Mrs. Walters directed him to catch the mallard.
“I’ll get ’im easy enough,” said he; “there’s no use in driving ’im. Them ducks always follow their own kind. Go we a bit out o’ the way, an’ I’ll be bound he’ll be on dry land afore we’ve got far.”
They retreated from the pond, and the bird ceased his gyrations, only fixing a wary eye on their departing figures. After consideration, he made for the spot where the rest had landed, and set out on their track, the violence of his efforts causing him to roll from side to side like a ship in a storm. When he was well out on his course, the old woman pounced upon him and bore him struggling to the box.
“Williams is a sensible man,” observed Anne, as she looked after George’s disappearing back. “I did well when I took him. There is a Providence over all our acts, little as we think it sometimes.”