"But oh, there were many things that Delilah wished to know!
"The Spoon-bill family was, as I have said, well born but poorly bred. Maren Spoon-bill and Oliver W. Spoon-bill both came of very good stock, but they had been the black sheep of their families and had forgotten the traditions and customs of their race. 'They had left no more pride,' Maren Spoon-bill's mother once said, 'than a sand-hill crane—no, nor a duck.'
"'No, nor a duck,' echoed Maren Spoon-bill and her husband, and gloried in it.
"And the children ran wild.
"But the children, though they ran wild, were not without ambition. On summer evenings, when the family took tea on the back porch and it was too warm for the children to run about much, they used to sit and tell their ambitions.
