She pocketed it again, looking out from under the wind-blown hair clustering from the edge of her shooting hood. "Blue-bird weather," she said, in her low and very sweet voice. "If no birds swing in by ten o'clock we might as well sleep until four." Marche leaned forward and scanned the water and sky alternately. Nothing stirred, save their lazily preening decoys. Uncle Dudley was still conversing with his wife at intervals; the swans and the cygnets fed or worried their leash snaps; the ducks paddled, or dozed on the stools, balanced on one leg. Far away, on Golden Bar, half a thousand wild geese floated, feeding; beyond, like snowflakes dotting the water, a few wild swans drifted. There were ducks, too, off Starfish Island again, but nothing flying in the blue except a slow hawk or some wandering gull, or now and then an eagle--sometimes a mature bird, in all the splendor of white head and tail, sometimes a young bird, seemingly larger, and all gray from crest to shank. Once an eagle threatened the decoys, and Uncle Dudley swore so lustily at him, and every duck and goose set up such a clamor, that Molly Herold picked up her gun for the emergency. But the magnificent eagle, beating up into the wind with bronze wings aglisten, suddenly sheered off; and, as he passed, Marche could see his bold head turn toward the blind where the sun had flashed him its telegraphic warning on the barrel of Molly's lifted gun. "Fine!" he whispered. "Splendid! I'm glad you didn't kill him." "I'm glad I didn't have to," she said. "Do you think you could have?" She turned toward him, wondering whether he might be serious; then smiled as he smiled. At the same instant, coming apparently from nowhere, four canvasbacks suddenly appeared over the clamoring decoys, so close in that, as they came driving by the blind and rose slightly, wings bowed, Marche could almost see their beady little eyes set in the chestnut red of the turning heads. Mechanically his gun spoke twice; rap-rap, echoed Miss Herold's gun, and splash! splash! down whirled two gray-and-red ducks; then a third, uncertain, slowed down, far out beyond the decoys, and slanted sideways to the water. The fourth went on. "Duffer that I am," said Marche good-humoredly. "That was a clean double of yours, Miss Herold!--clean-cut work." She said, slightly knitting her straight brows: "I should have crossed two of them and killed the one you missed. I think I'd better get the boat." "No, I'll go out after that kicker," he said, ashamed of his slovenly work. Five minutes later he returned with his kicker and her two ducks--great, fat, heavy canvasbacks, beautiful in their red, black, and drab plumage. "What about blue-bird weather, now?" he laughed. But she only smiled and said, "I'm very much afraid."