And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old Nurse.
LONGFELLOW.
The Grey Goose remembered quite well the year that Jackanapes began
to walk, for it was the year that the speckled hen for the first time
in all her motherly life got out of patience when she was sitting. She
had been rather proud of the eggs--they are unusually large--but she
never felt quite comfortable on them; and whether it was because she
used to get cramp, and got off the nest, or because the season was
bad, or what, she never could tell, but every egg was addled but one,
and the one that did hatch gave her more trouble than any chick she
had ever reared.
It was a fine, downy, bright yellow little thing, but it had a
monstrous big nose and feet, and such an ungainly walk as she knew no
other instance of in her well-bred and high-stepping family. And as to
behavior, it was not that it was either quarrelsome or moping, but
simply unlike the rest. When the other chicks hopped and cheeped on
the Green all at their mother's feet, this solitary yellow one went
waddling off on its own responsibility, and do or cluck what the
spreckled hen would, it went to play in the pond.
It was off one day as usual, and the hen was fussing and fuming after
it, when the Postman, going to deliver a letter at Miss Jessamine's
door, was nearly knocked over by the good lady herself, who, bursting
out of the house with her cap just off and her bonnet just not on,
fell into his arms, crying--
"Baby! Baby! Jackanapes! Jackanapes!"
If the Postman loved anything on earth, he loved the Captain's
yellow-haired child, so propping Miss Jessamine against her own
door-post, he followed the direction of her trembling fingers and made
for the Green.
Jackanapes had had the start of the Postman by nearly ten minutes. The
world--the round green world with an oak tree on it--was just becoming
very interesting to him. He had tried, vigorously but ineffectually,
to mount a passing pig the last time he was taken out walking; but
then he was encumbered with a nurse. Now he was his own master, and
might, by courage and energy, become the master of that delightful,
downy, dumpy, yellow thing, that was bobbing along over the green
grass in front of him. Forward! Charge! He aimed well, and grabbed it,
but only to feel the delicious downiness and dumpiness slipping
through his fingers as he fell upon his face. "Quawk!" said the yellow
thing, and wobbled off sideways. It was this oblique movement that
enabled Jackanapes to come up with it, for it was bound for the Pond,
and therefore obliged to come back into line. He failed again from
top-heaviness, and his prey escaped sideways as before, and, as
before, lost ground in getting back to the direct road to the Pond.
[Illustration]
And at the Pond the Postman found them both, one yellow thing rocking
safely on the ripples that lie beyond duck-weed, and the other washing
his draggled frock with tears, because he too had tried to sit upon
the Pond, and it wouldn't hold him.