IN THE SHETLANDS 67 
paid. This pretty little fleet of ducks, painted all 
sorts of colours and not one painted quite like an- 
other, made a very considerable part of the pleasure 
thus paid for. So the Corporation, vested with 
mysterious and almost unlimited powers of annoy- 
ance, decided that the proper thing to do was to do 
away with them, and they did do away with them, 
and the gardens have been the duller for it ever 
since. What they could have thought—— But 
there! they were a Corporation and acted like one. 
They had a precedent. They had previously done 
away with the peacocks. 
