Black Mallards 



modest like all true nobility, which made the 

 proud family trees of Mayflower folk or English 

 kings or Norman barons look like young berry- 

 bushes in the shade of a towering pine. 



Until late midsummer the family had the pond 

 all to themselves. Never a stranger-duck ap- 

 peared to share or challenge their heritage; while 

 day after day the mother watched over the little 

 brood as they fed or played or learned the wild- 

 duck signals. Like our dogs, every manner of 

 beast or bird has its own tribal ways or customs, 

 some of which do not appear in the young until 

 they begin to roam abroad or to mingle with their 

 kind. So, as I watched the brood emerge from 

 down to pin-feathers, there would come a red- 

 letter day when two of them, meeting as they 

 rounded a grassy point, would raise their wings 

 as if in salutation; and a later day when, the 

 pin-feathers having grown to fair plumage, their 

 young cheepings or whistlings would change to a 

 decided quack. 



Thereafter their talk was endlessly entertaining, 

 if one took the trouble to creep near enough to 

 appreciate its modulations, expressive of every 

 emotion between drowsiness and tense alarm; for 

 it cannot be heard, except as a meaningless sound, 

 beyond a few yards. The little hen-ducks got 

 on famously, having the mother's quacking as a 



[267] 



