Blue-Bird Weather

"It isn't the finest farming land in the world, is it, Jim?" he said humorously.

"I haven't seen any other land," said the boy quietly.

"Don't you remember the Northern country at all?"

"No, sir—except Central Park."

"Oh, you were New-Yorkers?"

"Yes, sir. Father–" and he fell abruptly silent.

They were walking together down the rutted road, and Marche glanced around at him.

"What were you going to say about your father, Jim?"

"Nothing." Then truth jogged his arm. "I mean I was only going to say that father and mother and all of us lived there."

"In New York?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is your—your mother living?"

"No, sir."

"I think I saw her picture in the sitting room," he said gently. "She must have been everything a mother should be."

"Yes, sir."

"Was it long ago, Jim?"

"When she died?"

"Yes."

"Yes, very long ago. Six years ago."

"Before you came here, then?"

"Yes, sir."

After they had walked in silence for a little while, Marche said, "I suppose you have arranged for somebody to take me out?"

"Yes, sir."

They emerged from the lane to the shore at the same moment, and Marche glanced about for the expected bayman.

"Oh, there he is!" he said, as a figure came from behind a dory and waded leisurely shoreward through the shallows—a slight figure in hip boots and wool shooting hood and coat, who came lightly across the sands to meet him. And, astonished, he looked into the gray eyes of Molly Herold.

"Father could not take you," she said, without embarrassment, "and Jim isn't quite big enough to manage the swans and geese. Do you mind my acting as your bayman?"

"Mind?" he repeated. "No, of course not. Only—it seems rather rough on you. Couldn't you have hired a bayman for me?"

"I will, if you wish," she said, her cheeks reddening. "But, really, if you'll let me, I am perfectly accustomed to bayman's work."

"Do you want to do it?"

She said, without self-consciousness, "If it is the same to you, Mr. Marche, I had rather that the bayman's wages came to us."

"Certainly—of course," he said hurriedly. Then, smiling: "You look the part. I took you for a young man, at first. Now, tell me how I can help you."

"Jim can do that. Still, if you don't mind handling the decoys–"

"Not at all," he said, going up to the fenced inclosures which ran from a rod or two inland down into the shallow water, making three separate yards for geese, swans, and ducks.

Jim was already in the duck pen, hustling the several dozen mallard and black ducks into an inland corral. The indignant birds, quacking a concerted protest, waddled up from the shore, and, one by one, the boy seized the suitable ones, and passed them over the fence to Marche. He handed them to Molly Herold, who waded out to the dory, a duck tucked under either arm, and slipped them deftly into the decoy-crates forward and aft.

The geese were harder to manage—great, sleek, pastel-tinted birds whose wing blows had the force of a man's fist—and they flapped and struggled and buffeted Jim till his blonde head spun; but at last Marche and Molly had them crated in the dory.

Then the wild swans' turn came—great, white creatures with black beaks and feet; and Molly and Marche were laughing as they struggled to catch them and carry them aboard.

But at last every decoy was squatting in the crates; the mast had been stepped, guns laid aboard, luncheon stowed away. Marche set his shoulder to the stern; the girl sprang aboard, and he followed; the triangular sail filled, and the boat glided out into the sound, straight into the glittering lens of the rising sun.

A great winter gull flapped across their bows; in the lee of Starfish Island, long strings of wild ducks rose like shredded clouds, and, swarming in the sky, swinging, drifting, sheered eastward, out toward the unseen Atlantic.

"Bluebills and sprigs," said the girl, resting her elbow on the tiller. "There are geese on the shoal, yonder. They've come out from Currituck. Oh, I'm afraid it's to be blue-bird weather, Mr. Marche."

"I'm afraid it is," he assented, smiling. "What do you do in that case, Miss Herold?"

"Go to sleep in the blind," she admitted, with a faint smile, the first delicate approach to anything resembling the careless confidence of camaraderie that had yet come from her.

"See the ducks!" she said, as bunch after bunch parted from the water, distantly, yet all around them, and, gathering like clouds of dusky bees, whirled away through the sky until they seemed like bands of smoke high drifting. Presently she turned and looked back, signaling adieu to the shore, where her brother lifted his arm in response, then turned away inland.

"That's a nice boy," said Marche briefly, and glanced up to see in his sister's face the swift and exquisite transformation that requires no words as answer.

"You seem to like him," said he, laughing.

Molly Herold's gray eyes softened; pride, that had made the love in them brilliant, faded until they grew almost sombre. Silent, her aloof gaze remained fixed on the horizon; her lips rested on each other in sensitive curves. There was no sound save the curling of foam under the bows.

Marche looked elsewhere; then looked at her again. She sat motionless, gray eyes remote, one little, wind-roughened hand on the tiller. The steady breeze filled the sail; the dory stood straight away toward the blinding glory of the sunrise.

Through the unreal golden light, raft after raft of wild ducks rose and whirled into the east; blue herons flopped across the water; a silver-headed eagle, low over the waves, winged his way heavily toward some goal, doggedly intent upon his own business.

Outside Starfish Shoal the girl eased the sheet as the wind freshened. Far away on Golden Bar thousands of wild geese, which had been tipping their sterns skyward in plunging quest of nourishment, resumed a more stately and normal posture, as though at a spoken command; and the long ranks, swimming, and led by age and wisdom, slowly moved away into the glittering east.

At last, off the starboard bow, the low, reedy levels of Foam Island came into view, and in a few minutes more the dory lay in the shallows, oars, mast, and rag stowed; and the two young people splashed busily about in their hip boots, carrying guns, ammunition, and food into the blind.

Then Molly Herold, standing on the mud bank, flung, one by one, a squadron of wooden, painted, canvasback decoys into the water, where they righted themselves, and presently rode the waves, bobbing and steering with startling fidelity to the real things.