those wings would knock down either of the children.




CHAPTER XXI

ROSE HAS AN IDEA


It was just like a nightmare, and both Margy and Mun Bun knew what
nightmares were. Those are dreams that, when you are "sleeping them,"
you get chased by something and your feet seem to stick in the mud so
that you can't run. It is a very frightful sort of dream. And this
adventure the little ones had got into was surely a frightful peril.

The hissing gander, his neck outstretched and his bill wide open,
followed the two children with every evidence of wishing to strike them.
His flapping wings were as powerful, it seemed, as those of the big
sea-eagle that had been caught aboard ship coming down from Boston, and
Mun Bun and Margy remembered that creature very vividly.

Others of the flock of geese came on, too. As long as the grains of corn
kept dropping from Margy's dish, the ravenous geese would follow, even
if they were not savage, as their leader was.

The chubby legs of the two children hardly kept them ahead of the
gander's bill. They shrieked at the top of their voices. But for once
none of the innumerable colored folks was in sight. Even their friend,
the gardener, had disappeared since Mun Bun and Margy had come down to