puns. So I headed him off at the first onset. But I should
not have been so entirely successful in the attempt had I not
been assisted by a pair of birds who came to distract his and
our attention from a neighboring thicket. They wheeled--the
gentle, graceful, sly, tantalizing things--in circles and
ellipses, now skimming along the surface of the water, now
swooping away in great smooth curves, then darting off in
headlong flight and pursuit. "My kingdom for a gun!" exclaimed
Halicarnassus with amateur ardor.

"I am glad you have no gun," said compassionate Grande. "Why
should you kill them?"

"Do not be alarmed," I said, soothingly, "a distaff would be
as deadly in his hands."

"Do you speak by the book, Omphale?" asked the Anakim, who
still carried those New Hampshire sheep on his back.

"We went a-ducking once down in Swampshire," I answered.

"Did you catch any?" queried Grande.

"Duckings? no," said Halicarnassus.

"Nor ducks either," I added. "He made great ado with his guns,
and his pouches, and his fanfaronade, and knocking me with his
elbows and telling me to keep still, when no mouse could be
more still than I, and after all he did not catch one."