Do you remember Hop-o’-My-Thumb, who hid under the wood-cutter’s stool and listened to his parents overcome by want? I was like him. I also listened, pretending to sleep, with my elbows on the table. It was not blood-curdling designs that I heard but grand plans that set my heart rejoicing.
“Suppose we breed some ducks,” says mother. “They sell very well in town. Henri would mind them and take them down to the brook. And we could feed them on the grease from the tallow-factory, which they say is excellent for ducks, and which we could buy for a small price.”
“Very well,” says father, “let’s breed some ducks. There may be difficulties in the way; but we’ll have a try.”
That night I had dreams of paradise: I was with my ducklings, clad in their yellow suits; I took them to the pond, I watched them have their bath, I brought them back again, carrying the more tired ones in a basket.
A month or two after the little birds of my dreams were a reality. There were twenty-four of them. They had been hatched by two hens, of whom one, the big black one, was an inmate of the house, while the other was borrowed from a neighbor.
To bring them up, the big, black hen is enough, so careful is she of her adopted family. At first everything goes perfectly: a tub with two fingers’ depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days the ducklings bathe in it under the anxious eye of the hen.
Two weeks later, the tub no longer satisfies. It contains neither cresses crammed with tiny Shellfish nor Worms and Tadpoles, dainty morsels both. The time has come for dives and hunts among the tangle of the water-weeds; and for us the day of trouble has also come. How are we, right up at the top of the hill, to get water enough for a pond for our broods? In summer, we have hardly water to drink!
Near the house there is only a scanty spring from which four or five families besides ourselves draw their water with copper pails. By the time that the schoolmasters donkey has quenched her thirst and the neighbors have taken their provision for the day, the spring-basin is dry. We have to wait four-and-twenty hours for it to fill. No, there is no place there for ducklings.
There is a brook at the foot of the hill, but to go down to it with the troop of ducklings is dangerous. On the way through the village we might meet murdering cats, or some surly dog might frighten and scatter the little band; and it would be a puzzling task to collect them all again. But there is still another spot, part way up the hill, where there is a meadow and a pond of some size. It is very quiet there, and the place can be reached by a deserted footpath. The ducklings will be well off.