“Tiresome little things!” he thought—“They want a lesson; and a lesson, and a sharp one too they shall have!”
With this, in the twinkling of an eye, he turned them into a pair of wooden shoes, and threw them on the shore in a heap of sand and mud. There they lay, quite dumb and unable to move. The old Duck and the rest of her family, seeing them disappear so suddenly, thought they had dived under the water to hide themselves. So without more ado, they waddled away with a great noise, cackling and lamenting over the wicked disobedience that had been shown by these two youngest ducklings to their Mother, who had been so kind to them. Meanwhile, they themselves lay in the mud quite still, no longer beautiful and shiny ducks, but only wooden shoes, and very ugly ones too.
The worst of it all was, that, shoes as they were, they suffered dreadfully from a desire to swim, and thus suffering they said to themselves,—
“Oh! if we could only get into the water! If some one would put us in—just for an instant!”
But they wished and sighed in vain, for an old peasant who was passing by at this moment caught sight of them and exclaimed,—
“Hullo! hullo! here are shoes! Yes, shoes, as I am a living man! Now this is what I call a lucky find!”
With these words he put them on, and walked away in the greatest state of excitement. But the shoes were much too small for him,—they pinched his gouty toes and made him altogether very uncomfortable, so on reaching home he told his wife he had bought her a nice pair of wooden shoes.
“I hope they will fit you,” he said—“I have often noticed, my dear, how the old shoes you wear let in the damp—now these will keep you warm and comfortable!”
The old wife tried them on. She was delighted with them. They fitted her to a T, as the saying is, and with hearty words and big tears of gratitude in her eyes, she thanked her tender husband again and again. He received these thanks in a very sly manner, for he knew in his heart that he did not altogether deserve them.
“I have,” he said inwardly, “given her something which cost me nothing,—absolutely nothing!” But he kept this to himself and smiled very good-humouredly, and thought—“Yes, yes! She ought to be grateful—of course she ought. And she is grateful. Ha! ha! That is the best of it!”