Neither was it a trifling thing, let whoso will say the contrary, to behold the ducks and geese marching forth in handsome order from their beds of fern and straw.  What a goodly noise they kept, what a flapping of their wings, and a jerking of their tails, as they stood right up and tried with a whistling in their throats to imitate a cockscrow!  And then how daintily they took the wet upon their dusty plumes, and ducked their shoulders to it, and began to dress themselves, and laid their grooved bills on the snow, and dabbled for more ooziness!

Lorna had never seen, I dare say, anything like this before, and it was all that we could do to keep her from rushing forth with only little lambswool shoes on, and kissing every one of them.  “Oh, the dear things, oh, the dear things!” she kept saying continually, “how wonderfully clever they are!  Only look at that one with his foot up, giving orders to the others, John!”

“And I must give orders to you, my darling,” I answered, gazing on her face, so brilliant with excitement; “and that is, that you come in at once, with that worrisome cough of yours; and sit by the fire, and warm yourself.”

“Oh, no, John!  Not for a minute, if you please, good John.  I want to see the snow go away, and the green meadows coming forth.  And here comes our favourite robin, who has lived in the oven so long, and sang us a song every morning.  I must see what he thinks of it!”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” I answered very shortly, being only too glad of a cause for having her in my arms again.  So I caught her up, and carried her in; and she looked and smiled so sweetly at me instead of pouting (as I had feared) that I found myself unable to go very fast along the passage.  And I set her there in her favourite place, by the sweet-scented wood-fire; and she paid me porterage without my even asking her; and for all the beauty of the rain, I was fain to stay with her; until our Annie came to say that my advice was wanted.

Now my advice was never much, as everybody knew quite well; but that was the way they always put it, when they wanted me to work for them.  And in truth it was time for me to work; not for others, but myself, and (as I always thought) for Lorna.  For the rain was now coming down in earnest; and the top of the snow being frozen at last, and glazed as hard as a china cup, by means of the sun and frost afterwards, all the rain ran right away from the steep inclines, and all the outlets being blocked with ice set up like tables, it threatened to flood everything.  Already it was ponding up, like a tide advancing at the threshold of the door from which we had watched the duck-birds; both because great piles of snow trended in that direction, in spite of all our scraping, and also that the gulley hole, where the water of the shoot went out (I mean when it was water) now was choked with lumps of ice, as big as a man’s body.  For the “shoot,” as we called our little runnel of everlasting water, never known to freeze before, and always ready for any man either to wash his hands, or drink, where it spouted from a trough of bark, set among white flint-stones; this at last had given in, and its music ceased to lull us, as we lay in bed.