They took their share of the food thrown out for the poultry, and then went off to the river for the day. During the hot weather they stayed there until after all respectable Hens had gone to roost. Even the Geese left the water long before they did. When they went to sleep, they settled down on the floor and dozed off. “It is much easier than flying up to roosts and then down again,” they said. “Find a place you like, and then stay there. We see no reason why people should make such a fuss about going to sleep.”
When the Shanghai Cock heard these things, he shook his head until his wattles swung. “That is all very well for the Ducks,” said he, “but from the way this Man acts, I think there may be a change coming for them by and by. I notice that things are more different every day.”
The Ducks soon began to see that it was different with them. Ducks, you know, are always very careless about where they lay their eggs. Some of these were so old that they seldom laid eggs, only the Pekin Duck and her big friend, the Aylesbury Duck, laid them quite often after the middle of winter. At first the Man looked in the old Pig-pen for them, but after he had looked many days and found only one, he drew a book out of his pocket and read a bit. Then he called the Little Girls to him and talked to them. “I want you to watch each of those white Ducks,” said he, “and for every one of their eggs which you find I will give you a penny.”
Each morning for some days after that, the two Ducks were followed by two hopeful Little Girls. “I don’t mind it so much now,” the Pekin Duck said to her friends on the third day, “but at first I didn’t know what to do. I would no sooner sit down to lay under a bush or in some cosy corner than a Little Girl would sit on the ground in front and watch me. Then I would move to another place, and she would move too. I must say, however, that they are very good children. The Boy who lived here often threw stones at us. These children never do. I sometimes think there may be as much difference in Boys and Girls as there is in Ducklings.”
When the Little Girls tired of watching for eggs to be laid, the Pekin Duck decided to do something she had never tried before. She was the youngest of the flock, and she wanted Ducklings. The older Ducks tried to discourage her. “Have a good time while you can,” said the Aylesbury Duck, who was about her age, and thought Ducklings a bother. “I don’t want to be troubled with a lot of children.”
The old Ducks advised her not to try it. “You think it will be very fine,” said they, “but you will find that you cannot go wherever you want to, and do whatever you please with Ducklings tagging along. The sitting alone is enough to tire a Duck out.”
“Oh, I think I could stand it,” remarked the Pekin Duck, quietly. “Didn’t some Duck stand it long enough to hatch me?”
“Hatch you? No indeed,” laughed an old Rouen Duck, who could remember quite distinctly things which had happened three years before on the farm from which they had all come to this. “Hatch you? A Shanghai Hen hatched you and half a dozen other Ducklings in a box with hay in it and slats across the front. I remember quite well how cross she became when she thought it time for her Chickens to chip the shell, and they did not chip. She never dreamed that she was sitting on Ducks’ eggs, although every Duck on the place knew it and thought it a good joke. She was a stupid thing, or she would have known without being told. Any bright Hen knows that Ducks’ eggs are larger, darker, and greasier looking than her own.”
The Pekin Duck remembered very little of her life before coming to the farm, so she was glad to hear of it from the old Rouen Duck. “What did my mother do when her eggs didn’t hatch?” said she.
“Do?” repeated the Rouen Duck. “Do? Why she did the only thing that any sitting fowl can do. She kept on sitting.”