4. At first Betty did not like it. She did not know what Snowdrop would say, and besides, she had a longing inside her to finish the job. She wanted to see the dear little things come from the shells.
5. "I shall love them as my own," said she, "unless the farmer's wife takes them from me." But she was quite happy when she saw the eggs placed safely in her own snug dry nest.
6. Betty sat on the eggs for three long weeks. She knew that was the proper time to wait for her own broods. But still no sign of the young ones was to be seen.
HER OWN SNUG NEST.
7. "I do believe that cold water has killed them before they are born!" said poor Betty, "for they never ought to have been laid so near a pond."
8. She sat on and on, for a fourth week. And, at the end of that time, she had her reward. There was a little faint tapping sound inside the shells.
9. The baby ducks were trying to get out of prison. She helped them by picking away bits of the shell as it broke, to let the light in at their tiny windows.
10. At last seven little yellow things as soft as satin cried, "peep, peep!" in a pretty whisper round her feet. Their bills and their feet were rather flat, it is true, but what of that? Betty loved them as if they were her own chicks.
11. "Of course I do not expect that they will be quite so handsome, so clever, or so good as if born from my own eggs," said she.