Oh, an old sea captain once lived here, and he brought them home with him. They used to call him “The Flying Dutchman.” That was curious, because he wasn’t a Dutchman at all. GREGERS. Was he not? HEDVIG. No. But at last he was drowned at sea; and so he left all those things behind him. GREGERS. Tell me now—when you are sitting in there looking at the pictures, don’t you wish you could travel and see the real world for yourself? HEDVIG. Oh no! I mean always to stay at home and help father and mother. GREGERS. To retouch photographs? HEDVIG. No, not only that. I should love above everything to learn to engrave pictures like those in the English books. GREGERS. H'm. What does your father say to that? HEDVIG. I don’t think father likes it; father is strange about such things. Only think, he talks of my learning basket-making, and straw-plaiting! But I don’t think _that_ would be much good. GREGERS. Oh no, I don’t think so either. HEDVIG. But father was right in saying that if I had learnt basket-making I could have made the new basket for the wild duck. GREGERS. So you could; and it was you that ought to have done it, wasn’t it? HEDVIG. Yes, for it’s _my_ wild duck. GREGERS. Of course it is. HEDVIG. Yes, it belongs to _me_. But I lend it to father and grandfather as often as they please. GREGERS. Indeed? What do they do with it? HEDVIG. Oh, they look after it, and build places for it, and so on. GREGERS. I see; for no doubt the wild duck is by far the most distinguished inhabitant of the garret? HEDVIG. Yes, indeed she is; for she is a _real_ wild fowl, you know. And then she is so much to be pitied; she has no one to care for, poor thing. GREGERS. She has no family, as the rabbits have—— HEDVIG. No. The hens too, many of them, were chickens together; but she has been taken right away from all her friends. And then there is so much that is strange about the wild duck. Nobody knows her, and nobody knows where she came from either. GREGERS. And she has been down in the depths of the sea. HEDVIG. [_With a quick glance at him, represses a smile and asks_:] Why do you say “the depths of the sea”? GREGERS. What else should I say? HEDVIG.