VI
MRS. GOOSE AND HER SWAMP COUSINS
It was a beautiful morning, very early, with the dew on the grass and the mists lifting from the sea, when Mrs. Goose with her seven little goslings walked through the farm gate, down the path to the road, and then waddled under the fence into the pasture.
"You are well along now, my children," she was saying, "and your travels should begin."
"And what are our travels?" the little geese piped as they stepped along beside their stately parent.
"Your travels, my dears, are those excursions away from the cramping and monotonous surroundings of the farmyard. That's what your travels are. None of your family are given to staying always and forever at home."
"Oh, no," the goslings all quacked in chorus. "We don't want to stay around that farmyard all our days. That's what the chickens do, and the guinea-hens. But where are we going now, Mother?"
For the beautiful Mrs. Goose was heading straight for the swamp at the foot of the great pasture, and already she was taking them through the tufted grass and the low bushes, through which they could not easily descry her stately form. They were quite out of breath, and bore along behind her, being very careful to keep exactly in her foot-prints.
"We are going to the great salt river, and the marshes," she called back to them. "That is where your cousins live and we shall spend a lovely day with them. But we must hurry through these bushes. I never feel safe until I am well out of them."
She explained no more than this, for she was a bird well versed in the bringing up of children, and she did not wish to frighten them. But, truth to tell, this bushy part of the path to her favorite haunts was always full of its terrors for her.
"It looks so very much like the spot where my first husband was attacked by a fox," she confided to one of her friends. "He was never seen again, of course, and although I was not long a widow, still I have never been consoled for his taking off."
Naturally, then, she had for the rest of her days a distrust of bushy paths, and it was with a great quack of relief that she emerged with all her little ones on the banks of the deep, narrow stream which was a part of the great marsh.
Off she swam on the water, paddling with a majestic ease, and down they hopped and splashed and paddled beside her, the seven of them, highly excited over the prospect of a day's adventure.
The stream was narrow and deep, much unlike the shallow duck-pond in the farmyard, and it gave the goslings an exhilarating sensation to be thus abroad on a real stream.
"How good it is," Mrs. Goose quacked, "to feel the clear, cool water, and to know that you are not paddling across a mere mud-puddle!
"And there are no tin cans and other rubbish here," she went on. "Very different, all this, from the rather common surroundings of the duck-pond. You must realize that your family is a superior one, and that while the ducks on the farm do very well for neighbors, they are not the aristocrats that we are. And I am taking you purposely, my children, to visit my most exclusive friends."
The old goose was indeed a haughty personage, as any one could tell by the way she held her head. For she swam as a soldier marches, with eyes to the front and a splendid air.
Soon they came to where the narrow inlet of the marsh widened into a broad expanse of water banked by low, wide areas of reeds and rushes. Many channels and enticing little bays made off into the depths of shady and inviting spots where there were cedars and alders and dense, tangled vines. There were delicious odors in the air, and this made the goslings suddenly very hungry. They begged their mother to let them run through the grasses to pluck the tender and inviting things which their eyes caught sight of. But she shook her downy head and kept them paddling along beside her, cautioning them very wisely:
"Never go browsing by yourself until you know the ways of the country. Where there are others feeding it is safe for goslings. But to go into those tall grasses, tempting as they are, is to walk right into danger. You have never met Mr. Blacksnake, and I hope you never will until you are too big to tempt him!"
Immediately, of course, they clamored for the details about this dreadful creature, but their mother spared them any unhappy visions of the sort.
"You must not dwell on such uncomfortable things," she would say. "All you need think of when you are out with me are the bright sky and the good green world. But here we are, almost at Mrs. Bittern's gate. And there is Grandpa Bittern waiting for us at the door."
As she spoke, the goslings all craned their necks; but they were not big enough to see over the top of things as their mother could, and they were totally in doubt as to who the Bitterns were, or where they lived.
Suddenly there was a great quacking and flapping of wings on the part of their mother, and they found themselves touching bottom in a beautiful shallow where the black earth and the mosses grew over the very water. Here all was shaded and hidden by the overhanging bushes, and great tree-trunks rose close at hand, with clinging vines and innumerable strands of leaf and tendril swaying in the clear air.
Never had they dreamed of such a beautiful spot. But they were not to realize how lovely it was all at once, for they were to get acquainted with it only after the greetings of the visit were over.
Their cousin, Mrs. Bittern, who was so slim and brown, with black trimmings to her wings, and a bit of gray lace at her bosom, and the stately gentleman who stood guard by her nest, were quite enough to overpower the little goslings. They couldn't remember their own names and they stammered with embarrassment; and in the nest was a solitary youngster, with a very long bill, and big, frightened eyes, whom they were cautious in approaching. His only greeting was a vicious poking at them with his little head, and they noted that his neck was very strong.
"Billy isn't used to children yet," Mrs. Bittern hastened to apologize. "But he'll soon get used to them. Just hand him a bit of fish, Father, and a few of those small crabs. Oh, a very small one, Father. You nearly choked him to death with that big one you gave him at breakfast."
True enough, little Billy Bittern was in a better humor when something more had gone down his throat; and while the two mothers fell into an immediate discussion of the stupidity of fathers and uncles, the baby Bittern and the little goslings were quacking and playing around the nest in the noisiest fashion.
"So this, my dears, is a true country home," their mother said as she turned to them. "This is the kind of thing that your father and I have always wanted; a little place of our own in the swamp!"
"Oh, Mother dear, wouldn't it be lovely!" they all burst out, really transported with joy at the thought of living forever where it was all like this, so free and open and sweet.
"Ha! ha!" laughed the tall owner of the charming retreat. "That is what you farm people always say when you get here. But you know very well you'll be glad to get back to what you call the conveniences and elegance of life."
By this he meant the cracked corn, and the snug quarters, and the rest of the good things in the farmer's yard.
But Mrs. Goose pretended not to understand him at all, and was helping Mrs. Bittern to put the nest to rights as they all prepared to go out for a walk. For that is always the first thing to do when you visit your country cousins.
Such precautions as the Bitterns took when they left the house! It was cover the nest here and put a stick there, and finally, to effect a complete disguise, they raked a lot of straw over the top. Why, you never would have guessed it was a house at all!
Then through the grasses and the deep, black mud, and over innumerable tufts of green, where there were great wild cabbages and tempting bunches of mallow and flag, they went in happy procession. The goslings nibbled and tasted and feasted, wherever their mother was sure it was wise, and little Billy with his sharp beak poked incessantly in the mud for the things he liked best in the way of tadpoles and beetles.
Almost all day they picnicked in this delightful place, and only stopped in their leisurely stroll when they came to a grassy knoll where the mother birds thought it well to let the children rest.
All the gossip of the year was gone over by their elders. Mrs. Bittern told of her winter sojourn far to the South.
"We stayed much of the time with the Herons and the Spoonbills. Theirs is such an attractive rookery, you know, and I delight in Southern society. We came North with your first cousin, Mrs. Hudson Goose. A noble family, your great Northern relatives, my dear Fluffy. But they fly a little too fast for us Bitterns. We parted after a few days. Longbill, you know, likes to take it easy when he travels."
But the children observed that Mrs. Bittern was moved to tears when their mother alluded to her late half-brother and another relative, uniting these names with a reference to Christmas dinner. But they did not understand the connection, and it puzzled them when Cousin Bittern answered:
"Never mind, dear Fluffy Goose, there's little danger for you. You know you're getting tough. Let's see, you're twenty now, are you not?"
And they were still more surprised when their mother bridled at this and said that surely Mrs. Bittern was mistaken. No, she was only eighteen, and if her neck was spared it was not at all because she was tough. It was because she possessed the ability to lay the most and largest eggs, and to rear the finest families.
Mrs. Bittern was only too eager to agree with her companion. Not for the world would she have her words taken amiss; so the little family quarrel was passed over, and Mr. Bittern merely observed that the ladies were getting a little tired, and he thought that they had all better go home.
But if he had been very quiet, this dignified Mr. Bittern, he was, like a good many modest people, none the less able to distinguish himself, for after they reached the welcome door-yard, and Mrs. Goose and her family were about to depart for home, he supplied the treat of the whole day.
"Surely, Cousin Longbill," Mrs. Goose had remarked, "you are going to boom for us before we go. I wouldn't have the babies miss it for anything."
Whereat, to their dismay, Mr. Bittern began making the most frightful sound they had ever heard. It was his great feat, that for which his family was renowned, and it was not like anything ever known on sea or land. To do it he filled himself so full of air that he was like to burst. And he was very red in the face when he got through, like a good many famous singers.
"Isn't it wonderful!" said his wife. "I never knew one to sing the national anthem better."
For, to her simple soul, her husband's song was of course the one and only song. It must consequently be very important.
Scarcely could Mrs. Goose praise her cousin enough, and the goslings all begged him to do it again. But once was enough, he reminded them, and they discreetly forbore from disagreeing with him.
By this time they must hurry to get home, and their farewells were hasty. Like many return journeys, the way back was the shortest; and before they knew it, the goslings were trailing through the bushes at the foot of their own pasture. And somehow the little hill and the pair of bars and the bit of road, even the farmyard strewn with straw and pleasingly disordered, suddenly looked better to them than the lonely home of the Bitterns far out in the great swamp.
"Ah, my dears," their mother said, as they waddled up to their home under the burdocks and the currant bushes, "that's what a day away from home does for you. It makes you glad for what you have."
And indeed they were happy to nestle under her ample wings, as the stars came out and the house dog bayed at the moon. And they were very happy to have heard their Cousin Bittern do his booming, and hoped, as many people hope after a great performance, that they would never have to hear it again!