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Aw, no," he said, and he puffed until his lips quacked, though the pipe gave out no smoke. "Just come in to get fire to my pipe. Must be going now. So long, boys! S'long! Bye-bye, Grannie!" No one answered him.
There were some geese in the field, which evidently did not like to have their privacy intruded upon, for they set up a terrible quacking as the children passed them. Ollie and Lucy, however, quacked back again, and the geese soon left them and continued to nibble away at the grass.
The pond was like glass and the black duck flock which had quacked noisily there at daybreak and drawn white lines of ripples across its black surface had gone south. Everywhere was silence. Everywhere silence, indeed, but it was the silence only of the slumbering, deeper voiced denizens.
"Oh, dear!" said the kingfisher, "only hark at him! I never heard such a character before in my life." "He nearly killed one of my little ones," quacked the duck, coming up.
Osmond apart, and inquired what he had recommended: this ascertained, he turned to Mrs. Dodd and said, "I advise venesection or cupping." "Oh, Dr. Short, pray have pity and order something less terrible. Dr. Sampson is so averse to bleeding." "Sampson? Sampson? never heard of him." "It is the chronothermal man," said Osmond. "Oh, ah! but this is too serious a case to be quacked.
"I like that!" said the cock, "I would rather go home on foot than let myself be harnessed to it; no, that is not our bargain. I do not mind being coachman and sitting on the box, but drag it myself I will not." As they were thus disputing, a duck quacked to them, "You thieving folks, who bade you go to my nut-hill? Well, you shall suffer for it!" and ran with open beak at the cock.
He went galloping on past the boy, who stopped, and flung an apple at him; past the turkeys, that came and gobbled at him; by the cow, that turned and ran back in a race with them until her breath gave out; by the ducks, that came and quacked at him; by an old donkey, that brayed over the wall at him; by some hens, that ran into the road under the horse's feet, and clucked at him; by a great rooster, that stood up on a fence, and crowed at him; by Farmer Jones, who looked out to see what had become of him; down the village street, and he never stopped till he had reached the door of the house.
The calves knew that it was he who singled out which should be sold to the butcher, and huddled up into a corner with beating hearts at his grim footstep; the sow grunted, the duck quacked, the hen bristled her feathers and called to her chicks when Mr. Stirn drew near. Nature had set her stamp upon him.
It was a day for the open road, and, as we say, for putting the seven glens and the seven bens and the seven mountain moors below a young man's feet, a day with invitation in the air and the promise of gifts around The mallards at morning had quacked in the Dhuloch pools, the otter scoured the burn of Maam, the air-goat bleated as he flew among the reeds, and the stag paused above his shed antlers on Torvil-side to hide them in the dead bracken.
Alas! for him, the mocking-bird mimicked his hideous cry, then quacked like the duck, and even Miss Guinea-fowl found that he could "pot-rack" better than she could.
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