THE MUD QUEEN 115 
‘“““T’m sorry,’ said Mary, ‘that you lost your fish, but 
we must hurry and feed these birds, just hear them 
holler!’ 
‘“When they reached the upper deck they found two 
ducks had escaped from their coop and had eaten all 
the feed Mary had mixed. They told their father about 
it and he was so mad he forgot all about his lumbago 
and got up and told grandpa Noah. Noah got mad too 
and said ‘those confounded pigs should have spoons to 
eat with.’ The next morning Mary heard a great clat- 
tering in the coop of the two ducks that escaped the 
day before and looking in she saw the first spoonbill 
ducks ever in captivity. Mary told father Shem, Shem 
told grandpa Noah, and Noah struck his cane down 
hard on the deck and said ‘served ’em right!’”’ 
“You don’t take any stock in such a yarn as that do 
you?’ I asked. 
‘Well, I don’t know, it don’t seem any more astound- 
ing than the Ark story,’’ replied Jimmy, ‘‘but anyhow 
I’ve often wondered what kind of a fish was on Joe’s 
ines 
The day proved warm and calm and there was little 
doing. The black raft of ducks had disintegrated and 
but few ducks came to our decoys. It seemed an hour 
between shots. Suddenly Jimmy exclaimed, ‘‘ Look at 
that.”” ‘‘That’’ was a bunch of a couple of hundred 
snow geese flying in from the east in the odd shape of 
a bulging figure eight. As we looked six faint reports 
of a far-away shotgun came drifting in. ‘‘Someone 
emptied their pump gun at the geese,’’ remarked 
Jimmy. 
It was true, the geese rose higher; the lower half of 
the figure eight drew out in a larger circle as they came 
directly over us. We could hear them gabbling to each 
