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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sed, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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-sh.e.l.ls. 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 gra.s.s, not a vestige of nest or straw or sh.e.l.l 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 Ca.n.a.l 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD EASTER]

At this the old woman would scream with laughter as she a.s.sured 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.

n.o.body 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--n.o.body 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'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.

If, as her memory failed her, the old creature was tempted into making up stories to supply the growing demand, it would not be fair to blame her too severely. Indeed, it is not at all certain that, as the years pa.s.sed, she herself knew which of the marvellous tales she related were true and which made to order.

"Yas, sir," she would say, "I ricollec' when all dis heah town wasn't nothin' but a alligator swamp--no houses--no fences--no streets--no gas-postes--no 'lection lights--no--_no river_--_no nothin'_!"

If she had only stopped before she got to the river, she would have kept the faith of her hearers better, but it wouldn't have been half so funny.

"There wasn't anything here then but you and the snakes, I suppose?" So a boy answered her one day, thinking to tease her a little.

"Yas, me an' de snakes an' alligators an' Gineral Jackson an' my ole marster's gran'daddy an'--"

"And Adam?" added the mischievous fellow, still determined to worry her if possible.

"Yas, Ma.r.s.e Adam an' ole Mistus, Mis' Eve, an' de great big p'isonous fork-tailed snake wha' s.n.a.t.c.h de apple dat Ma.r.s.e Adam an' Mis' Eve was squabblin' over--an' et it up!"