CHAPTER X

A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH RIDE

It happened upon a November evening (when I was about fifteen years old,
and out-growing my strength very rapidly, my sister Annie being turned
thirteen, and a deal of rain having fallen, and all the troughs in the
yard being flooded, and the bark from the wood-ricks washed down the
gutters, and even our water-shoot going brown) that the ducks in the
court made a terrible quacking, instead of marching off to their pen,
one behind another. Thereupon Annie and I ran out to see what might be
the sense of it. There were thirteen ducks, and ten lily-white (as the
fashion then of ducks was), not I mean twenty-three in all, but ten
white and three brown-striped ones; and without being nice about their
colour, they all quacked very movingly. They pushed their gold-coloured
bills here and there (yet dirty, as gold is apt to be), and they jumped
on the triangles of their feet, and sounded out of their nostrils; and
some of the over-excited ones ran along low on the ground, quacking
grievously with their bills snapping and bending, and the roof of their
mouths exhibited.

Annie began to cry 'Dilly, dilly, einy, einy, ducksey,' according to
the burden of a tune they seem to have accepted as the national duck's
anthem; but instead of being soothed by it, they only quacked three
times as hard, and ran round till we were giddy. And then they shook
their tails together, and looked grave, and went round and round
again. Now I am uncommonly fond of ducks, both roasted and roasting and
roystering; and it is a fine sight to behold them walk, poddling one
after other, with their toes out, like soldiers drilling, and their
little eyes cocked all ways at once, and the way that they dib with