tell.
She wanted him to go, for she didn't like his ways. Still, when he had
gone, she felt lonely. Misery loves company--even though it be very poor
company.

But Quackalina had not long to feel lonely. Almost any boy who has shot
a duck walks home with it pretty fast, and this boy nearly ran. He would
have run if his legs hadn't been so fat.

The first sound that Quackalina heard when they reached the gate was the
quacking of a thousand ducks, and it frightened her so that she forgot
all about the crab and her aching wing and even the decoy. The boy lived
on a duck farm, and it was here that he had brought her. This would seem
to be a most happy thing--but there are ducks and ducks. Poor little
Quackalina knew the haughty quawk of the proud white ducks of Pekin. She
knew that she would be only a poor colored person among them, and that
she, whose mother and grandmother had lived in the swim of best beach
circles and had looked down upon these incubator whitings, who were
grown by the pound and had no relations whatever, would now have to
suffer their scorn.

Even their distant quawk made her quake, though she feared her end was
near. There are some trivial things that are irritating even in the
presence of death.

But Quackalina was not soon to die. She did suffer some humiliations,
and her wing was very painful, but a great discovery soon filled her
with such joy that nothing else seemed worth thinking about.

There were three other black ducks on the farm, and they hastened to
tell her that they were already decoys, and that the one pleasant thing
in being a decoy was that it was _not_ to be killed or cooked or eaten.

This was good news. The life of a decoy-duck was hard enough; but when
one got accustomed to have its foot tied to the shore, and shots fired
all around it, one grew almost to enjoy it. It was so exciting. But to
the timid young duck who had never been through it it was a terrible
prospect.

And so, for a long time, little Quackalina was a very sad duck. She
loved her cousin, Sir Sooty, and she loved pink mallow blossoms. She
liked to eat the "mummy" fish alive, and not cooked with sea-weed, as
the farmer fed them to her.

But most of all she missed Sir Sooty. And so, two weeks later, when her
wing was nearly well, in its new, drooping shape, what was her joy when
he himself actually waddled into the farm-yard--into her very
presence--without a single quack of warning.

The feathers of on