THE GOOSING 239 



away again. No get in ; no good. Yes, yes,' says 

 Ustynia, with a chuckle. ' Dorndaftsa,' by the way, is 

 our old friend the blue-bottle. 



I can recommend this plan for any who would keep 

 game in this country. 



We had passed within a yard of a king-eider duck's 

 nest a dozen times, I should say, without seeing it, when 

 she suddenly rose straight off her eggs and away to the 

 creek. The extraordinary point was this, the eggs — 

 there were five, all incubated — were completely covered 

 up ; and yet none of us had seen her moving, though we 

 were working at the goose-cache not more than twenty 

 yards off. 



Katrina's time was much divided between storing 

 geese and attention to her baby. The baby, which very 

 seldom cried, did so on this day at intervals. Very likely 

 because, poor little wretch, the ' nyaninks ' settled on its 

 nose. Katrina danced it up and down in the cradle, con- 

 soling it with ' Pein-shaw, pein-shaw adski.' This word 

 ' pein-shaw ' they always used on these occasions. What 

 it exactly means I do not know, but if you can give to 

 it the same tone as an old nurse's 'There, there,' why 

 then you have the thing exactly. 



I came across a new flower in the bog to-day, a white 

 ranunculus with a powerful scent, half-daphne and half- 

 hawthorn. The idea of a sweet ranunculus pleased me 

 so much that I kept stopping the sleighs and collecting- 

 it. I put some in my button-hole, where it smelt as 



