Kyzie and Edith and Jimmy and Lucy came out to see the funny brood. Vendla set a pan of corn-meal dough near the back door. Polly was very hungry; but she would not touch one mouthful till she had called her little ones to breakfast. There were nine of them, and they dipped in their round bills like spoons.
“That’s a new style of eating,” clucked Polly. “Don’t you admire it?”
“Do you suppose Polly White thinks those creatures are chickens?” asked Edith.
“Yes,” said John, who was looking on; “of course she does, and very cute chickens too. You see, they belong to her.”
After their breakfast they rolled up their eyes, and John said,—
“Now guess what they’re thinking about.”
No one could guess, and John had to answer his own question.
“They’re thinking they want to swim.”
“Do you believe it?” said Kyzie. “What do they know about swimming? They never saw any water.”
There was a monstrous clay jar on the back veranda in which water was always kept cooling; it was called an olla (pronounced oya.) But the ducklings could not have peeped into that. Kyzie was right when she said “they never saw any water.”