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Now, it is impossible, with the space at our command, to recount all the sayings and doings of this section of the Water Wagtail's crew during that winter: how they built a hut for themselves close to that of their host; how they learned to walk on snowshoes when the deep snow came; how, when the lake set fast and the thick ice formed a highway to the shore, little Oscar taught Oliver Trench how to cut holes through to the water and fish under the ice; how hunting, sledging, football, and firewood-cutting became the order of the day; supping, story-telling, singing, and reading the manuscript Gospel according to John, the order of the evening, and sleeping like tops, with occasional snoring, the order of the night, when the waters were thus arrested by the power of frost, and the land was smothered in snow.
"Ah, Tom," quoth Massa Paul, "delighted to see you, come, you seem to have dry clothes on, so take the head of the table." I did so; and broke ground forthwith with great zeal. "Tom, a glass of wine, my dear," said Aaron. "Don't you admire us classical, after the manner of the ancients, eh? Wagtail's head dress, and Paul's night cap oh, the comforts of a woollen one!
It was great cry and little wool; and at length they got tired, and hauled off by mutual consent, finishing off as usual with an appeal to us "beg one feepenny, massa!" At six o'clock we drove to Mr Pepperpot Wagtail's.
To recover myself and think I sat upon the doorstep of an empty house, and there came dancing down the road with a curious, half-running, half-hopping step something like a water wagtail's a child, a boy about my own age, who, after eyeing me strangely sat down beside me. We watched each other for a few minutes; and I noticed that his mouth kept opening and shutting, though he said nothing.
Well, that's right, of course. And I don't believe the tailor bird could clean your hat in time, for it is so fancy he would have to be very careful of it. "But you can do as I did, make a hat out of ferns, and wear that to Nannie Wagtail's party. I'll help you." "Oh, how kind you are!" cried the little duck girl.
At last, when they tried to sleep, they could not do so on account of Willy Wagtail's singing to his sweetheart, "Sweet pretty creature! Sweet pretty creature!" without stopping, for more than five minutes at a time. "I wonder Chip-pi-ti-chip doesn't get tired of that song," said Dot. "She never does," yawned the Kangaroo, "and he never tires of singing it."
Since this paper was written I have three times heard the wood wagtail's true song in the morning, but in neither case was the bird in the air. See p. 284. See the paper of Daines Barrington in Philosophical Transactions for 1773; also, Darwin's Descent of Man, and Wallace's Natural Selection.
"Hiding," Tim said quickly. "About," added Judy. There was a hush in all their voices. The Tramp picked the small feather from his beard apparently a water- wagtail's and appeared to reflect a moment. He held the soft feather tenderly between a thumb and finger that were thick as a walking-stick and stained with roadside mud and yellow with flower-pollen too. "Hiding, is he?"
The young man could easily have watched Katharina's every movement, but he did not think it worth while. Nevertheless, as he rode on, the water- wagtail's little figure dwelt in his mind; not alone, however, for that of Paula immediately rose by her side; and the smaller Katharina's seemed, the more ample and noble did the other appear.
"Why, now," continued Aaron, to the doctor of the Wave who had just entered "why, here is a discovery, my dear doctor. You clap a hot blister on a poor fellow's head to cool it, but Doctor Cringle there has cooled Master Wagtail's brain, by blistering his stern eh? Make notes, and mind you report this to the College of Surgeons." I cleared myself of these imputations.
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