"I'd dare enough," answered Lily, who seldom confessed to dread of living thing, unless it were a horse; "but I know it would be of no use; and I never ask people for things when I'm sure they don't want to give them to me. Here's the carriage."
This was not Mabel's doctrine. Like Mamie Stone, she had a great deal of faith in fretting or worrying for that which other people did not wish to grant, knowing from experience that she often, by this means, gained her point.
Having seen Belle and Lily off, she sauntered out to the back lot where the chickens and ducks were kept, and stood looking at the ducklings with a growing desire to have one to play with. Should she go and ask Mrs. Clark?
Before she had fully made up her mind to do so, the woman herself came around the corner of the house, and the next moment her loud, sharp voice struck disagreeably on Mabel's ear, and put all thoughts of asking a favor from her quite out of the little girl's mind.
"Now look here! What are you about there? You let them chickens alone, and go round to your own side of the house. I don't want the boarders' children meddling round here."
Such was the greeting which Mabel received; not very encouraging certainly, and she moved away with a scowl at Mrs. Clark which did not make her look much more amiable than the loud-voiced scold herself.
"I wasn't touching your old chickens," she called out as soon as she thought herself at a safe distance.
But, instead of going back to the house, she walked on to the end of the lot where it was divided from the next field by a row of currant bushes and a stone wall. Walking along by the bushes, without any particular purpose, and thinking it was time for her to go and see if the other children were ready for the walk to the Rocks, she heard a curious little noise among the bushes.
Stooping down and peering in at the spot whence it seemed to come, she saw one of the ducklings lying on the ground, and making the faint sound which had attracted her attention.
"I wonder how it came here, so far from its hen-mother and the other ducklings," she said to herself. "I could take it up now if I liked, and carry it to the Rocks, and neither the hen nor Mrs. Clark could see me."