For a week or two after Polly White had begun to sit on the ducks’ eggs, Lucy asked every day,—

“Where’s my little duckies?”

And then she forgot all about them.

But Polly White was still sitting. It takes only three weeks to hatch chickens; but it takes four weeks to hatch ducklings, and poor Polly did not understand it, and was growing very tired. To keep up her spirits John and Vendla gave her all sorts of nice things to eat.

At last one day the ducklings began to peck out of the shell. And when they fairly came out how funny they looked! Very large and yellow, with round bills and yellow, flat feet; and when they tried to walk they waddled.

Polly looked surprised. Were they all lame? Had they all sprained their ankles? She had never seen any ducklings before; but she clucked just as proudly for all that.

“See my children! Aren’t they beauties? That’s a new style of walking. Isn’t it sweet?”

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.”

Still these yellow fuzz-balls had made up their minds that there was water somewhere in the world, and they meant to waddle, waddle, till they found it. Nobody had ever told them there was a pond in the garden; but they ran that way as fast as their web-feet could carry them. Their stepmother, Mrs. White, ran after, anxious to stop them; but the moment they saw the water they tried to go in. They could not climb up the wall. John took them in his hands, one by one, and dropped them into the pond.

Then they were happy. This was the very thing they had been dreaming about as they lay asleep in their egg-shell cribs!

But poor Polly! How frightened she was! How she flapped her wings and squawked! She thought her children had gone crazy; she was sure they would drown.

No, not they! They struck out their little feet like paddles, held up their heads, and rowed that pond as if they were giving lessons in swimming. The children all clapped their hands at the gay sight, and Jimmy cried,—

“Cheer, boys, cheer!”

After a little, Mrs. Polly grew calmer, and began to chuck again,—

“Those are my chickens; they’re all in the swim! See their new style of feet!”

Still she did not feel quite easy.

Just then Quon Wo, the Chinaman, drove along, calling out, “Sleet corn, cabbagee, spinney-gee.”

When he found what was going on, he shook his head till his long black cue danced over his shoulders.

“No so!” he cried. “No so! Lil duckee no slim-ee!” (Little ducks mustn’t swim.)

“Why not?” said John. “See how easy they go.”

But Quon Wo still shook his cue. He thought they ought not to swim yet without a mother-duck who would know how to oil their feathers for them. The stepmother hen could not do this. “Wait till they are a month old before they swim,” was the advice of Quon Wo.

“Well, if you’re going to be so fussy about it, Quon Wo, I’ll take ’em out,” said John.

And he did. So the fun was all spoiled; at least for this time.

John, Vendla, and the children went into the house. Vendla put on her sweeping-cap, and began to sweep the chambers, while Jimmy and Lucy strayed off to the kitchen.

On the long table against the kitchen wall stood an elegant china fruit-dish which Vendla had brought out from the parlor to wash.

“Pretty dish,” said Lucy, fingering the edges lovingly.

“Let that alone, or you’ll break it,” said Jimmy, in the tone of command he often used when speaking to his little sister.

Lucy did not obey at once.

“You’re the naughtiest child, Lucy Lyman Dunlee! You’ll go and break that, and then they’ll go and blame me! I always get punished for you!”

Jimmy pitied himself as he heard his own words.

“Yes, Lucy Lyman Dunlee, you’re the awfulest acting-est child!

“If you don’t stop picking cake, and spoiling things, and breaking things, I’ll—I’ll—why, they’ll think it’s me! and I’ll grow up to be despised!”

Lucy sprang away from the table in alarm. What it was to “grow up to be despised” she had no idea. Something bad, if it made Jimmy look like this!

“There comes Judy! What has she got in her mouth?” cried Jimmy, forgetting his fear of being “despised.” “It can’t be one of Polly’s chickens?”

With that, he and Lucy began to chase the cat about the room. Judy thought it hardly fair to have two children after her at once, and jumped into a chair, and from the chair to the table.

“She’s smelling the china dish with her nose. Come down; come down!” said Lucy.

Judy did not come, but continued to sniff at the dish.

“Stop that!” said Jimmy. “Come down, or I’ll pull you down!”

In a frolicsome mood he caught her by the tail, not roughly or unkindly. He had been taught gentleness to animals; but somehow in dragging her backward the fruit-dish got in the way. Perhaps Judy’s paw touched it, perhaps Jimmy’s elbow. Yes, it was probably Jimmy’s elbow. At any rate, the dish was overturned; and as it fell to the floor it broke in half a dozen pieces.

“Who did that?” cried Jimmy in dismay. He had not been aware of touching the dish. It was certainly an accident; still he was old enough to know that he was to blame for the accident. He should not have played with the cat while her nose was in the fruit-dish.

Yet he was the good boy who had just been scolding his little sister for nothing at all! The good boy who never did wrong!

“Oh, that beau’-ful dish!” sighed Lucy. “Poor mamma’ll feel so bad!”

“Well, ’twas the cat did it,” said Jimmy quickly.

His forehead was full of wrinkles; his eyes were full of tears. Lucy always made ready to cry when he cried, and now she turned up the corner of her apron; and for half a minute the room was so still that you could almost have heard a fly walking on the roller-towel.

Jimmy stood on one foot and thought: “I’ll go tell mamma I didn’t mean to. No; I’ll tell her Judy did it. Judy did, I think.”

The fly on the towel gazed at Jimmy; Jimmy gazed at the fly.

“Mamma’s pretty dish,” said Lucy, breaking the silence. Jimmy was not crying, so she dropped the corner of her apron.

“Judy broke it,” declared Jimmy again.

“Yes,” assented the little sister; “Judy broked it.”

“Well—go tell mamma so. I hear her in the parlor.”

Lucy turned to go.

“No, don’t; I don’t want you to. Needn’t tell mamma anything.”

“No; needn’t tell her anyfing,” said Lucy, whirling about, and looking at her brother.

She and the little fly both looked at him. Lucy did not know any more than the fly what was going on in Jimmy’s mind. Neither of them dreamed it was a battle between right and wrong.

“If I run out to the garden, won’t that be the best way? Then Vendla’ll come in, and she’ll think the cat broke it. I’ll shut the cat in here all alone,” thought this little soldier, who was fighting a battle between right and wrong. “It will not be same as a lie,—I think not.”

Jimmy moved towards the back door, and there he stood quite still.

Why did Lucy stare at him so, as if she were watching to see him make up his mind?

“Lucy Lyman Dunlee, what makes you look so awful sober? Just as if papa was dead, and mamma had been hooked by a cow? Why don’t you go out-doors and see—see where Polly White is?”

Lucy was gone in a twinkling, glad to get away from Jimmy, who was scowling now “as fierce as ten furies.”

He looked at the door, then at the cat. “Wish I was little like Lucy; then it wouldn’t be wrong. No matter what you do when you’re little like Lucy.”

Jimmy sighed.

“Babies like her! They don’t have to be gentlemen. But when you’re a boy, and getting so big—

“Did George Washington ever shut up a cat? George Washington wouldn’t do it. ‘I can’t tell a lie,’ says George Washington. No, sir!”

This seemed to settle the question for Jimmy. The ‘No, sir!’ sounded as loud as a cannon-ball, though even the cat did not hear. The words were spoken only in Jimmy’s heart.

“No, sir,” said he again, and ran for the parlor as if a mountain-lion were chasing him. He dared not walk, lest he might not go at all.

How he hated to go! That fruit-dish was a new one only last Christmas. Mamma would almost cry to know it was broken.

He ran every step of the way. Mamma almost cried, it is true; but it was just for joy!

“My blessed, blessed Jimmy-boy! I can forgive you for carelessness; but, oh, if you had shut Judy into the kitchen, and deceived your mother!”

“But I didn’t do it, mamma!”

“No, no, no; God kept you from that meanness, the good God.”

“Mamma, your beautiful fruit-dish is broken!” exclaimed Edy, bursting into the parlor. “Isn’t it too bad?”

“Never mind, daughter; I’m too happy to care for such trifles,” returned Mrs. Dunlee, with a sunny glance at Jimmy that warmed him to the very depths of his heart.