full
of fear. At every noise, a cow lowing, a cock crowing, or a ploughman in
the distance hulloaing to scare the rooks, she started, her ears pricked
to catch the sound, her muzzle wrinkled up and her nose twitched, and
she would then press herself against his legs. They walked round the
garden and down to the pond where there were ornamental waterfowl, teal,
widgeon and mandarin ducks, and seeing these again gave her great
pleasure. They had always been her favourites, and now she was so
overjoyed to see them that she behaved with very little of her usual
self-restraint. First she stared at them, then bouncing up to her
husband's knee sought to kindle an equal excitement in his mind. Whilst
she rested her paws on his knee she turned her head again and again
towards the ducks as though she could not take her eyes off them, and
then ran down before him to the water's edge.

But her appearance threw the ducks into the utmost degree of
consternation. Those on shore or near the bank swam or flew to the
centre of the pond, and there huddled in a bunch; and then, swimming
round and round, they began such a quacking that Mr. Tebrick was nearly
deafened. As I have before said, nothing in the ludicrous way that arose
out of the metamorphosis of his wife (and such incidents were
plentiful) ever stood a chance of being smiled at by him. So in this
case, too, for realising that the silly ducks thought his wife a fox
indeed and were alarmed on that account he found painful that spectacle
which to others might have been amusing.

Not so his vixen, who appeared if anything more pleased than ever when
she saw in what a commotion she had set them, and began cutting a
thousand pretty capers. Though at first he called to her to come back
and walk another way, Mr. Tebrick was overborne by her pleasure and sat
down, while she frisked around him happier far than he had seen her ever
since the change. First she ran up to him in a laughing way, all smiles,
and then ran down again to the water's edge and began frisking and
frolicking, chasing her own brush, dancing on her hind legs even, and
rolling on the ground, then fell to running in circles, but all this
without paying any heed to the ducks.

But they, with their necks craned out all pointing one way, swam to and
fro in the middle of the pond, never stopping their quack, quack quack,
and keeping time too, for they all quacked in chorus. Presently she came
further away from the pond, an