The Happy Garden 



I believed it all, and carried away the ducks. 

 That was a Thursday. 



They were brought home, installed, given a 

 little green house by the lake, surveyed, admired, 

 chortled over. They were very pretty and had 

 tremendous washings in the water. 



On Friday they were even more charming, until, 

 in the evening, I saw the brown bird with the white- 

 ringed neck with something long and gleaming in 

 his beak. . . . Gulp — gobble : and it was not for 

 a moment or two that I realised that I had been 

 cozened and cheated and betrayed. . . . These 

 were no innocent ducks that I had introduced to 

 my Eden, but ravening monsters, who, instead of 

 the idyllic comic opera names I had given them, 

 should have been called Gorging Jack and Guzzling 

 Jemmy, and that poor Little Billee would never 

 live to be made Commander of Seventy-Three. 



Once I have been taken in, I have great diffi- 

 culty in being undeceived, and I was still foolish 

 enough to think that the golden carp might have 

 found its way into the duck's beak by accident, or 

 misadventure : and I left the ducks on the pond 

 and slept on the problem. 



Ducks or Gold-fish ? 



Next day, Billy, the sheepdog, solved it. 



He is well born, well bred, well mannered, but, 

 164 



