We brought over a batch of our gingerbread for Aunt Linda. Our Minnie made it. It’s all over nuts.”
“I skinned the almonds,” said Pip. “I just stuck my hand into a saucepan of boiling water and grabbed them out and gave them a kind of pinch and the nuts flew out of the skins, some of them as high as the ceiling. Didn’t they, Rags?”
Rags nodded. “When they make cakes at our place,” said Pip, “we always stay in the kitchen, Rags and me, and I get the bowl and he gets the spoon and the egg beater. Sponge cake’s best. It’s all frothy stuff, then.”
He ran down the verandah steps to the lawn, planted his hands on the grass, bent forward, and just did not stand on his head.
“That lawn’s all bumpy,” he said. “You have to have a flat place for standing on your head. I can walk round the monkey tree on my head at our place. Can’t I, Rags?”
“Nearly,” said Rags faintly.
“Stand on your head on the verandah. That’s quite flat,” said Kezia.
“No, smarty,” said Pip. “You have to do it on something soft. Because if you give a jerk and fall over, something in your neck goes click, and it breaks off. Dad told me.”
“Oh, do let’s play something,” said Kezia.
“Very well,” said Isabel quickly, “we’ll play hospitals. I will be the nurse and Pip can be the doctor and you and Lottie and Rags can be the sick people.”
Lottie didn’t want to play that, because last time Pip had squeezed something down her throat and it hurt awfully.
“Pooh,” scoffed Pip. “It was only the juice out of a bit of mandarin peel.”
“Well, let’s play ladies,” said Isabel. “Pip can be the father and you can be all our dear little children.”
“I hate playing ladies,” said Kezia. “You always make us go to church hand in hand and come home and go to bed.”
Suddenly Pip took a filthy handkerchief out of his pocket. “Snooker! Here, sir,” he called. But Snooker, as usual, tried to sneak away, his tail between his legs. Pip leapt on top of him, and pressed him between his knees.
“Keep his head firm, Rags,” he said, and he tied the handkerchief round Snooker’s head with a funny knot sticking up at the top.
“Whatever is that for?” asked Lottie.
“It’s to train his ears to grow more close to his head—see?” said Pip. “All fighting dogs have ears that lie back. But Snooker’s ears are a bit too soft.”
“I know,” said Kezia. “They are always turning inside out. I hate that.”
Snooker lay down, made one feeble effort with his paw to get the handkerchief off, but finding he could not, trailed after the children, shivering with misery.
9
PAT came swinging along; in his hand he held a little tomahawk that winked in the sun.
“Come with me,” he said to the children, “and I’ll show you how the kings of Ireland chop the head off a duck.”
They drew back—they didn’t believe him, and besides, the Trout boys had never seen Pat before.
“Come on now,” he coaxed, smiling and holding out his hand to Kezia.
“Is it a real duck’s head? One from the paddock?”
“It is,” said Pat. She put her hand in his hard dry one, and he stuck the tomahawk in his belt and held out the other to Rags. He loved little children.
“I’d better keep hold of Snooker’s head if there’s going to be any blood about,” said Pip, “because the sight of blood makes him awfully wild.” He ran ahead dragging Snooker by the handkerchief.
“Do you think we ought to go?” whispered Isabel. “We haven’t asked or anything. Have we?”
At the bottom of the orchard a gate was set in the paling fence. On the other side a steep bank led down to a bridge that spanned the creek, and once up the bank on the other side you were on the fringe of the paddocks. A little old stable in the first paddock had been turned into a fowl house. The fowls had strayed far away across the paddock down to a dumping ground in a hollow, but the ducks kept close to that part of the creek that flowed under the bridge.
Tall bushes overhung the stream with red leaves and yellow flowers and clusters of blackberries. At some places the stream was wide and shallow, but at others it tumbled into deep little pools with foam at the edges and quivering bubbles. It was in these pools that the big white ducks had made themselves at home, swimming and guzzling along the weedy banks.
Up and down they swam, preening their dazzling breasts, and other ducks with the same dazzling breasts and yellow bills swam upside down with them.
“There is the little Irish navy,” said Pat, “and look at the old admiral there with the green neck and the grand little flagstaff on his tail.”
He pulled a handful of grain from his pocket and began to walk towards the fowl-house, lazy, his straw hat with the broken crown pulled over his eyes.
“Lid. Lid—lid—lid—lid——” he called.
“Qua. Qua—qua—qua—qua——” answered the ducks, making for land, and flapping and scrambling up the bank they streamed after him in a long waddling line. He coaxed them, pretending to throw the grain, shaking it in his hands and calling to them until they swept round him in a white ring.
From far away the fowls heard the clamour and they too came running across the paddock, their heads thrust forward, their wings spread, turning in their feet in the silly way fowls run and scolding as they came.
Then Pat scattered the grain and the greedy ducks began to gobble. Quickly he stooped, seized two, one under each arm, and strode across to the children. Their darting heads and round eyes frightened the children—all except Pip.
“Come on, sillies,” he cried, “they can’t bite. They haven’t any teeth. They’ve only got those two little holes in their beaks for breathing through.”
“Will you hold one while I finish with the other?” asked Pat. Pip let go of Snooker. “Won’t I? Won’t I? Give us one. I don’t mind how much he kicks.”
He nearly sobbed with delight when Pat gave the white lump into his arms.
There was an old stump beside the door of the fowl-house. Pat grabbed the duck by the legs, laid it flat across the stump, and almost at the same moment down came the little tomahawk and the duck’s head flew off the stump. Up the blood spurted over the white feathers and over his hand.
When the children saw the blood they were frightened no longer. They crowded round him and began to scream. Even Isabel leaped about crying: “The blood! The blood!” Pip forgot all about his duck. He simply threw
