"That's a nice boy," said Marche briefly, and glanced up to see in his
sister's face the swift and exquisite transformation that requires no
words as answer.
"You seem to like him," said he, laughing.
Molly Herold's gray eyes softened; pride, that had made the love in
them brilliant, faded until they grew almost sombre. Silent, her aloof
gaze remained fixed on the horizon; her lips rested on each other in
sensitive curves. There was no sound save the curling of foam under the
bows.
Marche looked elsewhere; then looked at her again. She sat motionless,
gray eyes remote, one little, wind-roughened hand on the tiller. The
steady breeze filled the sail; the dory stood straight away toward the
blinding glory of the sunrise.
Through the unreal golden light, raft after raft of wild ducks rose and
whirled into the east; blue herons flopped across the water; a
silver-headed eagle, low over the waves, winged his way heavily toward
some goal, doggedly intent upon his own business.
Outside Starfish Shoal the girl eased the sheet as the wind freshened.
Far away on Golden Bar thousands of wild geese, which had been tipping
their sterns skyward in plunging quest of nourishment, resumed a more
stately and normal posture, as though at a spoken command; and the long
ranks, swimming, and led by age and wisdom, slowly moved away into the
glittering east.
At last, off the starboard bow, the low, reedy levels of Foam Island
came into view, and in a few minutes more the dory lay in the shallows,
oars, mast, and rag stowed; and the two young people splashed busily
about in their hip boots, carrying guns, ammunition, and food into the
blind.
Then Molly Herold, standing on the mud bank, flung, one by one, a
squadron of wooden, painted, canvasback decoys into the water, where
they righted themselves, and presently rode the waves, bobbing and
steering with startling fidelity to the real things.
Then it came the turn of the real things. Marche and Molly, a struggling
bird tucked under each arm, waded out along the lanes of stools, feeling
about under the icy water until their fingers encountered the wire-cored
cords. Then, to the leg rings of each madly flapping duck and swan and
goose they snapped on the leads, and the tethered birds, released, beat
the water into foam and flapped and splashed and tugged, until, finally
reconciled, they began to souse themselves with great content, and
either mounted their stools or swam calmly about as far as their tethers
permitted.
Marche, struggling knee-deep in the water, his arms full of wildly
flapping gander, hailed Molly for instructions.