Chapter 4

A SWIMMER



Henrietta Hen ran as fast as she could down the bank and stood as near the water as she dared, cackling loudly and flapping her wings.

Her child, who was swimming in the duck-pond, seemed to have no intention of minding her. Nor did he seem to have any intention of drowning; and as for getting his feet wet, he acted as if he liked that.

"What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?" Henrietta Hen squawked. She made so much noise that some of her neighbors came a-running, to see what was the matter. And as soon as they discovered what had happened they began to laugh.

"We may as well tell you," they said to Henrietta Hen, "that that chap out there is a duckling. The water won't hurt him."

Henrietta Hen gasped and gaped. She was astonished. But she soon pulled herself together. And it was just like her to begin to boast.

"See!" she cried to her friends, and waved a wing toward the water with an air of pride. "There isn't one of you that has a child that can beat him swimming."

"I should hope not!" said Polly Plymouth Rock with a shrug of her fine shoulders. And all the others agreed that they wanted no swimmers in their families.

Henrietta Hen announced that she was sorry for them. "Every brood," she declared, "should have at least one swimmer in it." She began to strut up and down the edge of the duck-pond, clucking in a most overbearing fashion. Really, she had never felt quite so important before--not even when her first brood pecked their way out of their shells.

"There's nothing quite like swimming," Henrietta Hen remarked with a silly smirk. "If it weren't for getting my feet wet I'd be tempted to learn myself. No doubt my son could teach me."

"Your son!" the old white hen sniffed. "He's not your son, Henrietta Hen. Somebody played a joke on you. Somebody put a duck's egg under you while you were hatching your eggs. And I think I can guess who it was that did it."

For just a moment Henrietta Hen stood still. The news almost took her breath away. Her comb trembled on the top of her head. She even stopped clucking. And she looked from one to another of her companions as if in hopes of finding one face, at least, that looked doubtful.... Alas! Everybody appeared to agree with old Whitey.

"If this is so," Henrietta muttered at last, "it's strange nobody ever noticed before that there was a duckling in my brood."

"We knew from the very first!" Polly Plymouth Rock told her. "You were the only one on the farm that didn't see that one of your family was different from the rest."

All this time the young duckling was swimming further and further away. He seemed to have forgotten all about his foster mother.