She wanted him to go, for she didn't like his ways. Still, when he had
gone, she felt lonely. Misery loves company--even though it be very poor
company.
But Quackalina had not long to feel lonely. Almost any boy who has shot
a duck walks home with it pretty fast, and this boy nearly ran. He would
have run if his legs hadn't been so fat.
The first sound that Quackalina heard when they reached the gate was the
quacking of a thousand ducks, and it frightened her so that she forgot
all about the crab and her aching wing and even the decoy. The boy lived
on a duck farm, and it was here that he had brought her. This would seem
to be a most happy thing--but there are ducks and ducks. Poor little
Quackalina knew the haughty quawk of the proud white ducks of Pekin. She
knew that she would be only a poor colored person among them, and that
she, whose mother and grandmother had lived in the swim of best beach
circles and had looked down upon these incubator whitings, who were
grown by the pound and had no relations whatever, would now have to
suffer their scorn.
Even their distant quawk made her quake, though she feared her end was
near. There are some trivial things that are irritating even in the
presence of death.
But Quackalina was not soon to die. She did suffer some humiliations,
and her wing was very painful, but a great discovery soon filled her
with such joy that nothing else seemed worth thinking about.
There were three other black ducks on the farm, and they hastened to
tell her that they were already decoys, and that the one pleasant thing
in being a decoy was that it was _not_ to be killed or cooked or eaten.
This was good news. The life of a decoy-duck was hard enough; but when
one got accustomed to have its foot tied to the shore, and shots fired
all around it, one grew almost to enjoy it. It was so exciting. But to
the timid young duck who had never been through it it was a terrible
prospect.
And so, for a long time, little Quackalina was a very sad duck. She
loved her cousin, Sir Sooty, and she loved pink mallow blossoms. She
liked to eat the "mummy" fish alive, and not cooked with sea-weed, as
the farmer fed them to her.
But most of all she missed Sir Sooty. And so, two weeks later, when her
wing was nearly well, in its new, drooping shape, what was her joy when
he himself actually waddled into the farm-yard--into her very
presence--without a single quack of warning.
The feathers of one of his beautiful wings were clipped, but he was
otherwise looking quite well, and he hastened to tell her that he was
happy, even in exile, to be with her again. And she believed him.
He had been captured in a very humiliating way, and this he made her
promise never to tell. He had swum so near the decoy-duck that his foot
had caught in its string, and before he could get away the farmer had
him fast. "And now," he quacked, "I'm glad I did it," and Quackalina
quacked, "So am I." And they were very happy.
[Illustration: "SIR SOOTY HIMSELF ACTUALLY WADDLED INTO THE FARM-YARD"]
Indeed, they grew so blissful after a while that they decided to try to
make the best of farm life and to settle down. So they began meandering
about on long waddles--or waddling about on long meanders--all over
the place, hunting for a cozy hiding-place for a nest. For five whole
days they hunted before Quackalina finally settled down into the hollow
that she declared was "just a fit" for her, under the edge of the old
shanty where the Pekin feathers were stored.
White, fluffy feathers are very beautiful things, and they are soft and
pleasant to our touch, but they are sad sights to ducks and geese, and
Quackalina selected a place for her nest where she could never see the
door open into this dread storehouse.
It was, indeed, very well hidden, and, as if to make it still more
secure, a friendly golden-rod sprang up quite in front of it, and a
growth of pepper-grass kindly closed in one side.
Quackalina had never been sent out on decoy duty, and after a time she
ceased to fear it, but sometimes Sir Sooty had to go, and his little
wife would feel very anxious until he came back.
There are some very sad parts in this little story, and we are coming to
one of them now.
The home-nest had been made. There were ten beautiful eggs in it--all
polished and shining like opals. And the early golden-rod that stood on
guard before it was sending out a first yellow spray when troubles began
to come.
CHAPTER II
Quackalina thought she had laid twice as many as ten eggs in the nest,
but she could not be quite sure, and neither could Sir Sooty, though he
thought so, too.
Very few poetic people are good at arithmetic, and even fine
mathematicians are said to forget how to count when they are in love.
Certain it is, however, that when Quackalina finally decided to be
satisfied to begin sitting, there were exactly ten eggs in the
nest--just enough for her to cover well with her warm down and feathers.
"Sitting-time" may seem stupid to those who are not sitting; but
Quackalina's breast was filled with a gentle content as she sat, day by
day, behind the golden-rod, and blinked and reflected and listened for
the dear "paddle, paddle" of Sir Sooty's feet, and his loving "qua',
qua'"--a sort of caressing baby-talk that he had adopted in speaking to
her ever since she had begun her long sitting.
[Illustration: "'I'M GOIN' TO SWAP 'EM'"]
Quackalina was a patient little creature, and seldom left her nest,
so that when she did so for a short walk in the glaring sun, she was apt
to be dizzy and to see strange spots before her eyes. But this would all
pass away when she got back to her cozy nest in the cool shade.
But one day it did not pass away--it got worse, or, at least, she
thought it did. Instead of ten eggs in the nest she seemed to see
twenty, and they were of a strange, dull color, and their shape seemed
all wrong. She blinked her eyes nineteen times, and even rubbed them
with her web-feet, so that she might not see double, but it was all in
vain. Before her dazzled eyes twenty little pointed eggs lay, and when
she sat upon them they felt strange to her breast. And then she grew
faint and was too weak even to call Sir Sooty, but when he came waddling
along presently, he found her so pale around the bill that he made her
put out her tongue, and examined her symptoms generally.
Sir Sooty was not a regular doctor, but he was a very good quack, and
she believed in him, which, in many cases, is the main thing.
So when he grew so tender that his words were almost like "qu, qu," and
told her that she had been confined too closely and was threatened with
_foie gras_, she only sighed and closed her eyes, and, keeping her fears
to herself, hoped that the trouble was all in her eyes indeed--or her
liver.
Now the sad part of this tale is that the trouble was not with poor
little Quackalina's eyes at all. It was in the nest. The same farmer's
boy who had kept her sitting of eggs down to ten by taking out one every
day until poor Quackalina's patience was worn out--the same boy who had
not used her as a decoy only because he wanted her to stay at home and
raise little decoy-ducks--this boy it was who had now chosen to take her
ten beautiful eggs and put them under a guinea-hen, and to fetch the
setting of twenty guinea eggs for Quackalina to hatch out.
He did this just because, as he said, "That old black duck 'll hatch out
as many eggs again as a guinea-hen will, an' the guinea 'll cover her
ten eggs _easy_. I'm goin' to swap 'em." And "swap 'em" he did.
Nobody knows how the guinea-hen liked her sitting, for none but herself
and the boy knew where her nest was hidden in a pile of old rubbish down
by the cow-pond.
[Illustration: "MADE HER PUT OUT HER TONGUE"]
When a night had passed, and a new day showed poor Quackalina the twenty
little eggs actually under her breast--eggs so little that she could
roll two at once under her foot--she did not know what to think. But
like many patient people when great sorrows come, she kept very still
and never told her fears.
She had never seen a guinea egg before in all her life. There were
birds' nests in some of the reeds along shore, and she knew their little
toy eggs. She knew the eggs of snakes, too, and of terrapins, or
"tarrups," as they are called by the farmer folk along the bay.
When first she discovered the trouble in the nest she thought of these,
and the very idea of a great procession of little turtles starting out
from under her some fine morning startled her so that her head lay limp
against the golden-rod for fully thirteen seconds. Then she got better,
but it was not until she had taken a nip at the pepper-grass that she
was sufficiently warmed up to hold up her head and think. And when she
thought, she was comforted. These dainty pointed eggs were not in the
least like the soft clumsy "double-enders" that the turtles lay in the
sand. Besides, how could turtle-eggs have gotten there anyway? How much
easier for one head to go wrong than twenty eggs.
She chuckled at the very folly of her fears, and nestling down into the
place, she soon began to nod. And presently she had a funny, funny
dream, which is much too long to go into this story, which is a great
pity, for her dream is quite as interesting as the real story, although
it is not half so true.
Sitting-time, after this, seemed very long to Quackalina, but after a
while she began to know by various little stirrings under her downy
breast that it was almost over. At the first real movement against her
wing she felt as if everything about her was singing and saying,
"mother! mother!" and bowing to her.
Even the pepper-grass nodded and the golden-rod, and careless roosters
as they passed _seemed_ to lower their combs to her and to forget
themselves, just for a minute. And a great song was in her own bosom--a
great song of joy--and although the sound that came from her beautiful
coral bill was only a soft "qua', qua'," to common ears, to those who
have the finest hearing it was full of a heavenly tenderness. But there
was a tremor in it, too--a tremor of fear; and the fear was so terrible
that it kept her from looking down even when she knew a little head was
thrusting itself up through her great warm wing. She drew the wing as a
caressing arm lovingly about it though, and saying to herself, "I must
wait till they are all come; then I'll look," she gazed upward at the
moon that was just showing a rim of gold over the hay-stack--and closed
her eyes.
There was no sleep that long night for little mother Quackalina.
It was a great, great night. Under her breast, wonderful happenings
every minute; outside, the white moonlight; and always in sight across
the yard, just a dark object against the ground--Sir Sooty, sound
asleep, like a philosopher!
Oh yes, it was a great, great night. Its last hours before day were very
dark and sorrowful, and by the time a golden gleam shot out of the east
Quackalina knew that her first glance into the nest must bring her
grief. The tiny restless things beneath her brooding wings were chirping
in an unknown tongue. But their wiry Japanesy voices, that clinked
together like little copper kettles, were very young and helpless, and
Quackalina was a true mother-duck, and her heart went out to them.
When the fatal moment came and she really looked down into the nest, her
relief in seeing beautiful feathered things, at least, was greater than
any other feeling. It was something not to have to mother a lot of
"tarrups," certainly.
Little guineas are very beautiful, and when presently Quackalina found
herself crossing the yard with her twenty dainty red-booted hatchlings,
although she longed for her own dear, ugly, smoky, "beautiful"
ducklings, she could not help feeling pleasure and pride in the
exquisite little creatures that had stepped so briskly into life from
beneath her own breast.
It was natural that she should have hurried to the pond with her brood.
Wouldn't she have taken her own ducklings there? If these were only
little "step-ducks," she was resolved that, in the language of
step-mothers, "they should never know the difference." She would begin
by taking them in swimming.
Besides, she longed for the pond herself. It was the place where she
could best think quietly and get things straightened in her mind.
Sir Sooty had not seen her start off with her new family. He had said to
himself that he had lost so much rest all night that he must have a good
breakfast, and so, at the moment when Quackalina and the guineas slipped
around the stable to the cow-pond, he was actually floundering in the
very centre of one of the feed-troughs in the yard, and letting the
farmer turn the great mass of cooked "feed" all over him. Greedy ducks
often act that way. Even the snow-white Pekins do it. It is bad enough
any time, but on the great morning when one becomes a papa-duck he ought
to try to be dignified, and Sir Sooty knew it. And he knew full well
that events had been happening all night in the nest, and that was why
he said he had lost rest. But he hadn't. A great many people are like
Sir Sooty. They say they lose sleep when they don't.
But listen to what was taking place at the cow-pond, for it is this that
made this story seem worth the telling.
When Quackalina reached the pond, she flapped her tired wings three
times from pure gladness at the sight of the beautiful water. And then,
plunging in, she took one delightful dive before she turned to the
shore, and in the sweetest tones invited the little ones to follow her.
But they--
Well, they just looked down at their red satin boots and shook their
heads. And then it was that Quackalina noticed their feet, and saw that
they would never swim.
It was a great shock to her. She paddled along shore quite near them for
a while, trying to be resigned to it. And then she waddled out on the
grassy bank, and fed them with some newts, and a tadpole, and a few
blue-bottle flies, and a snail, and several other delicacies, which they
seemed to enjoy quite as much as if they had been young ducks. And then
Quackalina, seeing them quite happy, struck out for the very middle of
the pond. She would have one glorious outing, at least. Oh, how sweet
the water was! How it soothed the tender spots under her weary wings!
How it cooled her ears and her tired eyelids! And now--and now--and
now--as she dived and dipped and plunged--how it cheered and comforted
her heart! How faithfully it bore her on its cool bosom! For a few
minutes, in the simple joy of her bath, she even forgot to be sorrowful.
And now comes the dear part of the troublous tale of this little black
mother-duck--the part that is so pleasant to write--the part that it
will be good to read.
When at last Quackalina, turning, said to herself, "I must go ashore now
and look after my little steppies," she raised her eyes and looked
before her to see just where she was. And then the vision she seemed to
see was so strange and so beautiful that--well, she said afterwards that
she never knew just how she bore it.
Just before her, on the water, swimming easily on its trusty surface,
were ten little ugly, smoky, "beautiful" ducks! Ten little ducks that
looked precisely like every one of Quackalina's relations! And now they
saw her and began swimming towards her.
Before she knew it, Quackalina had flapped her great wings and quacked
aloud three times, and three times again! And she didn't know she was
doing it, either.
She did know, though, that in less time than it has taken to tell it,
her own ten beautiful ducks were close about her, and that she was
kissing each one somewhere with her great red bill. And then she saw
that upon the bank a nervous, hysterical guinea-hen was tearing along,
and in a voice like a carving-knife screeching aloud with terror. It
went through Quackalina's bosom like a neuralgia, but she didn't mind it
very much. Indeed, she forgot it instantly when she looked down upon her
ducklings again, and she even forgot to think about it any more. And so
it was that the beautiful thing that was happening on the bank, under
her very eyes almost, never came to Quackalina's knowledge at all.
When her own bosom was as full of joy as it could be, why should she
have turned at the sound of the carving-knife voice to look ashore, and
to notice that at its first note there were twenty little pocket-knife
answers from over the pond, and that in a twinkling twenty pairs of red
satin boots were running as fast as they could go to meet the great
speckled mother-hen, whose blady voice was the sweetest music in all the
world to them?
When, after quite a long time, Quackalina began to realize things, and
thought of the little guineas, and said to herself, "Goodness gracious
me!" she looked anxiously ashore for them, but not a red boot could she
see. The whole delighted guinea family were at that moment having a
happy time away off in the cornfield out of sight and hearing.
This was very startling, and Quackalina grieved a little because she
couldn't grieve more. She didn't understand it at all, and it made her
almost afraid to go ashore, so she kept her ten little ducklings out
upon the water nearly all day.
And now comes a very amusing thing in this story.
When this great, eventful day was passed, and Quackalina was sitting
happily among the reeds with her dear ones under her wings, while Sir
Sooty waddled proudly around her with the waddle that Quackalina thought
the most graceful walk in the world, she began to tell him what had
happened, beginning at the time when she noticed that the eggs were
wrong.
Sir Sooty listened very indulgently for a while, and then--it is a pity
to tell it on him, but he actually burst out laughing, and told her,
with the most patronizing quack in the world, that it was "all
imagination."
[Illustration: "HER OWN TEN BEAUTIFUL DUCKS WERE CLOSE ABOUT HER"]
And when Quackalina insisted with tears and even a sob or two that it
was every word true, he quietly looked at her tongue again, and then he
said a very long word for a quack doctor. It sounded like 'lucination.
And he told Quackalina never, on any account, to tell any one else so
absurd a tale, and that it was only a canard--which was very flippant
and unkind, in several ways. There are times when even good jokes are
out of place.
At this, Quackalina said that she would take him to the nest and show
him the little pointed egg-shells. And she did take him there, too. Late
at night, when all honest ducks, excepting somnambulists and such as
have vindications on hand, are asleep, Quackalina led the way back to
the old nest. But when she got there, although the clear, white
moonlight lay upon everything and revealed every blade of grass, not a
vestige of nest or straw or shell remained in sight.
The farmer's boy had cleared them all away.
By this time Quackalina began to be mystified herself, and after a
while, seeing only her own ten ducks always near, and never sighting
such a thing as little, flecked, red-booted guineas, she really came to
doubt whether it had all happened or not.
And even to this day she is not quite sure. How she and all her family
finally got away and became happy wild birds again is another story. But
while Quackalina sits and blinks upon the bank among the mallows, with
all her ugly "beautiful" children around her, she sometimes even yet
wonders if the whole thing could have been a nightmare, after all.
But it was no nightmare. It was every word true. If anybody doesn't
believe it, let him ask the guineas.
OLD EASTER
OLD EASTER
Nearly everybody in New Orleans knew Old Easter, the candy-woman. She
was very black, very wrinkled, and very thin, and she spoke with a wiry,
cracked voice that would have been pitiful to hear had it not been so
merry and so constantly heard in the funny high laughter that often
announced her before she turned a street corner, as she hobbled along by
herself with her old candy-basket balanced on her head.
People who had known her for years said that she had carried her basket
in this way for so long that she could walk more comfortably with it
than without it. Certainly her head and its burden seemed to give her
less trouble than her feet, as she picked her way along the uneven
_banquettes_ with her stick. But then her feet were tied up in so many
rags that even if they had been young and strong it would have been hard
for her to walk well with them. Sometimes the rags were worn inside her
shoes and sometimes outside, according to the shoes she wore. All of
these were begged or picked out of trash heaps, and she was not at all
particular about them, just so they were big enough to hold her old
rheumatic feet--though she showed a special liking for men's boots.
When asked why she preferred to wear boots she would always answer,
promptly, "Ter keep off snake bites"; and then she would almost
certainly, if there were listeners enough, continue in this fashion:
"You all young trash forgits dat I dates back ter de snake days in dis
town. Why, when I was a li'l' gal, about _so_ high, I was walkin' along
Canal Street one day, barefeeted, an' not lookin' down, an' terrectly I
feel some'h'n' nip me '_snip!_' in de big toe, an' lookin' quick I see a
grea' big rattlesnake--"
As she said "snip," the street children who were gathered around her
would start and look about them, half expecting to see a great snake
suddenly appear upon the flag-stones of the pavement.
[Illustration: OLD EASTER]
At this the old woman would scream with laughter as she assured them
that there were thousands of serpents there now that they couldn't see,
because they had only "single sight," and that many times when they
thought mosquitoes were biting them they were being "'tackted by deze
heah onvisible snakes."
It is easy to see why the children would gather about her to listen to
her talk.
Nobody knew how old Easter was. Indeed, she did not know herself, and
when any one asked her, she would say, "I 'spec' I mus' be 'long about
twenty-fo'," or, "Don't you reckon I mus' be purty nigh on to nineteen?"
And then, when she saw from her questioner's face that she had made a
mistake, she would add, quickly: "I means twenty-fo' _hund'ed_, honey,"
or, "I means a _hund'ed_ an' nineteen," which latter amendment no doubt
came nearer the truth.
Having arrived at a figure that seemed to be acceptable, she would
generally repeat it, in this way:
"Yas, missy; I was twenty-fo' hund'ed years ole las' Easter Sunday."
The old woman had never forgotten that she had been named Easter because
she was born on that day, and so she always claimed Easter Sunday as her
birthday, and no amount of explanation would convince her that this was
not always true.
"What diff'ence do it make ter me ef it comes soon or late, I like ter
know?" she would argue. "Ef it comes soon, I gits my birfday presents
dat much quicker; an' ef it comes late, you all got dat much mo' time
ter buy me some mo'. 'Tain't fur me ter deny my birfday caze it moves
round."
And then she would add, with a peal of her high, cracked laughter: "Seem
ter me, de way I keeps a-livin' on--an' a-livin' on--_an' a-livin'
on_--maybe deze heah slip-aroun' birfdays don't pin a pusson down ter
ole age so close't as de clock-work reg'lars does."
And then, if she were in the mood for it, she would set her basket down,
and, without lifting her feet from the ground, go through a number of
quick and comical movements, posing with her arms and body in a way that
was absurdly like dancing.
Old Easter had been a very clever woman in her day, and many an extra
picayune had been dropped into her wrinkled palm--nobody remembered the
time when it wasn't wrinkled--in the old days, just because of some
witty answer she had given while she untied the corner of her
handkerchief for the coins to make change in selling her candy.
[Illustration: "'YAS, MISSY, I WAS TWENTY FO' HOND'ED YEARS OLE, LAS'
EASTER SUNDAY'"]
One of the very interesting things about the old woman was her memory.
It was really very pleasant to talk with a person who could
distinctly recall General Jackson and Governor Claiborne, who would tell
blood-curdling tales of Lafitte the pirate and of her own wonderful
experiences when as a young girl she had served his table at Barataria.