“Can you cook?” asked the dog.
“Indeed I can,” said Polly Punk. “My Aunt Deborah used to cook at a hotel and she showed me how. You get the fire burning and I’ll soon have the fish fried.”
So very soon they had a nice meal ready of fried trout and truffles for the old lady.
“Now,” said Punk, “we must go into the cave and get a bed ready for Mrs. Tubbs.”
So they went into the cave and made a fine, soft bed of leaves.
“What shall we do for a pillow,” asked Punk. “Shall we use the pig, he would be nice and soft?”
“No,” said Ponk, “I’m going to use him as a hot-water bottle. It’s very important to keep the old lady’s feet warm. But I have some feathers back home which will make a fine pillow. They are some of my own which I kept last moulting season.”
“What did you do that for?” asked Punk.
“Well,” said the duck, standing first on one foot then on the other, “the fact is I’m not getting any younger myself and I thought that if, when I am very old, I should get bald, I could have them stuck on with glue or something. I’ll fly over to the farm and fetch them. I know just where I put them: they’re in the left-hand drawer of my bureau under my lavender bonnet.”
With a flap of her wings she flew over the tree-tops to the farm and in a minute was back again with the feathers in a bag.