The Sheep and Lamb

by Thomas Miller

Duck and Ducklings.

LTHOUGH you cannot see her cottage, you can look at a portion of the brook that runs by the end of her garden, in which the old white duck and three of her little ducklings are swimming, while the remainder have left the water and got out on the grass to be fed. That is the old woman's little granddaughter who is holding the duckling in both her hands, and kissing it, and the other is her companion, who lives over the hill where you see a little morsel of blue sky between the overhanging leaves, and who has come all the way along that footpath to play with her, and feed the little ducklings. If you notice the duckling the granddaughter is petting, you will see it has got its eye on the food in the little girl's hand; and if you could read its thoughts, you would find it was saying to itself, "O, bother your fuss and stew! I wish you would put me down, and let me gobble up some of that nice new bread before it is all gone. Kissing, and patting, and nursing me won't fill my belly, I can tell you; though it's all well enough, when I've eaten until I'm full to the very top of my neck, to snuggle to you and be kept nice and warm, while I have a good long nap." You can see by its eye it's a sly little duckling; and though it pretends to be so fond of the child, lying still and such like, yet it's all of a fidget to get down, and quite envies the little ducklings that are feeding out of the other girl's hand. That is the Greedy duckling.

Now the grandmother is such a funny little old woman, having one leg shorter than the other, which causes her to go up and down as she walks! The villagers call her Old Hoppity-kick, because, when she walks with her horn-handled stick and moves it along, she goes "hop," and when she moves both her feet she goes "hoppity," and when she pulls up her short leg to start again, she gives a kind of a little "kick" with it; so that what with her long leg, her short leg, and her stick, the noise she makes when she walks rather fast sounds a good deal like "hoppity-kick, hoppity-kick."

Then she has a sharp, hooked nose, not much unlike the beak of a poll parrot; and she wears round spectacles with horn rims, and these she always calls her "goggles;" and, besides all this, she is hump-backed, and has an old gray cat that is very fond of jumping on her hump, and sitting there when she goes out into her garden, looking about him as well as she does, as if to see how things are getting on. She talks to her old cat, when she has no one else to speak to, just as she does to her granddaughter.

She came up one day with her stick in her hand, her goggles on, and the gray cat sitting on her hump, where he went up and down, down and up, at every "hoppity-kick" she gave, and stopped to watch her granddaughter feed the ducklings. "Why, what a greedy little duckling that is beside you," said granny, pointing to it with her horn-handled stick; "he doesn't seem willing to let his little brothers and sisters have a taste of the food you are giving them, pecking and flying at them, and driving them off in the way he does. I'm sure he is a nasty, greedy little duckling, and when he gets big enough I'll have him killed."

"I don't think he's so greedy, granny," replied the little maid, taking him up in both her hands, and kissing him; "it's only because he's so fond of me, and jealous of the other ducklings when they come close to me. Look how still he lies, and how he nestles up to me! He's very fond of me."

"Humph; fond of you for what he can get, like a good many more in the world," said old Granny Grunt, while the gray cat gave a "mew, mew," as if to say, "Right you are, old granny;" then off she went, "hoppity-kick, hoppity-kick," back again into her cottage, the hem of her quilted petticoat making bobs up and down all the way she went.

"You're not a greedy little thing, are you, ducky?" said the little maid to the duckling, kissing it again, when her grandmother and the cat had gone. "It's because you love me so, isn't it? and don't like any of the other little ducklings to be noticed, do you?"

"O, what a silly Sukey you are!" thought the Greedy Duckling, laying its head on one side of her face, as if to show it was so fond of her it didn't know what to do. "Do you think I would make such a pretended fuss over you as I do if you didn't give me three times as much to eat as any of the rest of the ducklings get? Not I. I often feel as if I should like to bite a bit off the end of your silly little nose when you are kissing and fondling me. Do you know I would much rather have my head under the water, and be poking about among the mud for worms, little eels, and frogs, and such like things, than have your lips so near me? Why, the other day you'd been eating onions; and though I dare say I shall smell strong enough of 'em some day, and sage too, as I've heard your old granny say when I have to be roasted, yet that time won't come yet for a long while, and I don't want to be reminded of my end before it does come. Why don't you empty your old granny's jam pots, or her honey jar; that smell wouldn't be so bad to bear as onions,—Fah!"