'Well, don't tell tales this time either,' was Jack's only acknowledgment. 'We'd better be going now, before anybody comes.'
Jack was the biggest boy, and liked his own way. Moreover, he generally made the rest like it too. Peggy and Bessy uneasily got up from their seat, and back the procession went across the green grass and daisies, Jack carrying the duck inside his jacket, where it quacked loudly, and made the company look round anxiously, for fear of stray listeners.
'What will mother say when she sees it?' suggested Tommy, as they slunk along the lane.
'Mother is not going to see it,' returned Jack; 'it's going into the wood-shed. I'll make it a nice house there, all to itself—better than it had at the farm by a long way.'
So instead of going straight into the house, the party repaired to the wood-shed at the end of the garden, where the duck was carefully fenced in behind some boards, and supplied with the remainder of the crusts for supper.
'He'll go off to sleep in a bit,' said Jack, with a sigh of relief. 'Now we'll go in; and mind, you're not to say anything about it.'
It was easy for Jack to say that, but it wasn't by any means so easy to do it. Every minute or two somebody would begin to say something bearing upon the subject, and break off short in sudden alarm. Every time there was a moment's silence, they would be listening for faint quacks from the wood-shed, and somehow it befell that there came no further opportunity of visiting the prisoner that evening; for it was Saturday,—the great festival of the bath-tub,—and by the time the whole seven had gone through the performance, it was too late for anything but bed.
Never mind; to-morrow would be Sunday, and Jack promised himself a lovely time with his dear cluck. He would slip a piece of bread into his pocket at breakfast; there was a noble ditch not very far off, where nobody ever went, and he would take it there for a swim. Jack took a last look through the curtainless window at the shed roof, and went to bed brimful of plans for to-morrow and the duck.
Ah, if that duck had but known or understood the joys that lay before him! But he didn't; he was only a poor solitary baby duck, taken away from his mother and his home, and left all alone in a cold, strange place, and the night was very long and very bleak, and his little body ached with cold and hunger, and he quacked and quacked till his throat grew sore, and the quacks wouldn't come any longer, and at last, just as it was beginning to grow grey morning, he feebly curled up his yellow toes, and rolled over on his back—and died!
'Tommy, come down the garden, and mind nobody sees you,' whispered Jack, after breakfast. 'We'll take that duck to the ditch, and have some fun. Hurry up!'