The next day Aunt Maria was moved by the sight of the six, weary but still pursuing the indifferent hen, keeping up the while a chorus of soft sorrowful little quackings, which ought to have touched her heart—but didn’t. By this time they were so weak that, if Aunt Maria had not taken them into the kitchen and fed them and covered them up in a basket of flannel, they would never have lived through the second night.
Thereafter the old kitchen became a nursery. Six human babies could hardly have called for more attention, or have made more trouble, or have been better loved than those six fuzzy, soft, yellow ducklings. In a few days, the whole home-life on top of the Cobble centred around them. They needed so much nursing and petting and soothing, that it almost seemed to Aunt Maria as if a half-century had rolled back, and she was once more looking after babies long, long lost to her. Even old Hen became attached to them enough to cuff Nip violently when that pampered animal growled at the newcomers, and showed signs of abolishing them. From that moment Nip joined the Brahma hen in ignoring the ducklings completely. If any attention was shown them in his presence, he would stalk away majestically, as if overcome with astonishment that humans would spend their time over six yellow ducks instead of one yellow dog.
During the ducks’ first days in the kitchen, someone had to be with them constantly. Otherwise all six of them would go “Yip, yip, yip,” at the top of their voices. As soon as any one came to their cradle, or even spoke to them, they would snuggle down contentedly under the flannel, and sing like a lot of little tea-kettles, making the same kind of a sleepy hum that a flock of wild mallards gives when they are sleeping far out on the water. They liked the Deacon and Hen, but they loved Aunt Maria. In a few days they followed her everywhere around the house, and even out on the farm, paddling along just behind her, in single file, and quacking vigorously if she walked too fast.
One day she tried to slip out and go down to the sewing-circle at Mrs. Miner Rogers’s at the foot of the hill; but they were on her trail before she had taken ten steps. They followed her all the way down, and stood with their beaks pressed against the bay-window, watching her as she sat in Mrs. Rogers’s parlor. When they made up their minds that she had called long enough, they set up such a chorus of quackings that Aunt Maria had to come.
“Those pesky ducks will quack their heads off if I don’t leave,” she explained shamefacedly.
The road up-hill was a long, long trail for the ducklings. Every now and then they would stop and cry with their pathetic little yipping note, and lie down flat on their backs, and hold their soft little paddles straight up in the air, to show how sore they were. The last half of the journey they made in Aunt Maria’s apron, singing away contentedly as she plodded up the hill.
As they grew older, they took an interest in everyone who came; and if they did not approve of the visitor, would quack deafeningly until he went. Once Aunt Maria happened to step suddenly around the corner of the house as a load of hay went past. Finding her gone, the ducks started solemnly down the road, following the hay-wagon, evidently convinced that she was hidden somewhere beneath the load. They were almost out of sight when Aunt Maria called to them. At the first sound of her voice, they turned and hurried back, flapping their wings and paddling with all their might, quacking joyously as they came.
Aunt Maria and the flock had various little private games of their own. Whenever she sat down, they would tug at the neatly tied bows of her shoelaces, until they had loosened them; whereupon she would jump up and rush at them, pretending great wrath; whereupon they would scatter on all sides, quacking delightedly. When she turned back, they would form a circle around her, snuggling their soft necks against her gown until she scratched each uplifted head softly. If she wore button-shoes they would pry away at the loose buttons and attempt to swallow them. When she was working in her flower-garden, they would bother her by swallowing some of the smallest bulbs, and snatching up and running away with larger ones. At other times they would hide in dark corners and rush out at her with loud and terrifying quacks, at which Aunt Martha would pretend to be much frightened and scuttle away, pursued by the six.
All three of the family were forever grumbling about the flock. To hear them, one would suppose that their whole lives were embittered by the trouble and expense of caring for a lot of useless, greedy ducks. Yet when Hen suggested roast duck for Thanksgiving, Deacon Jimmy and Aunt Maria lectured him so severely for his cruelty, that he was glad to explain that he was only joking. Once, when the ducks were sick, he dug angleworms for them all one winter afternoon, in the corner of the pigpen where the ground still remained unfrozen; and Deacon Jimmy nearly bankrupted himself buying pickled oysters, which he fed them as a tonic.
It was not long before they outgrew their baby clothes, and wore the mottled brown of the mallard duck, with a dark steel-blue bar edged with white on either wing. The leader evidently had a strain of black duck in her blood. She was larger, and lacked the trim bearing of the aristocratic mallard. On the other hand, Blackie had all the wariness and sagacity of the black duck, than whom there is no wiser bird. As the winter came on, a coop was fixed up for them not far from the kitchen, where they slept on warm straw in the coldest weather, with their heads tucked under their soft, down-lined wings up to their round, bright eyes. The first November snowstorm covered their coop out of sight; but when Aunt Maria called, they quacked a cheery answer back from under the drift.