THE rain rained itself out in the night, and the next morning, when the little ducklings awoke, they found, to their glee, that the sun was shining bright and clear. That meant they could go down to the river for a swim as usual.

Very soon after breakfast the whole family started for the river. The ducklings ran ahead, while Mother Duck waddled after them. Only Curly-Tail stayed by her mother’s side, walking beside her, and holding to a fold of her skirt. She always liked to be close to mother.

“Don’t go in the water until I get there, children,” Mother Duck called after the others as they ran ahead.

“No, mother, we won’t,” answered the ducklings.

Squdge was a large, stout, active duckling. He could run faster than any of the others, and so he was the first to reach the river bank. There he began looking about for any tid-bits he could find in the way of a fat beetle, a grass-hopper or a tadpole. He was a very greedy duckling. Often and often his mother was obliged to tell him not to be so greedy, but to share things with his little brothers and sisters, but he was not always willing to do this.

Now as he peered about with his bright black eyes he suddenly espied near the mud-bank a little round hole, and just showing over the edge of the hole was what looked like the tail of a particularly fine, fat worm.

“Oh, ho!” thought Squdge to himself. “Here’s a fine fat morsel. I’ll just pull it out and eat it before any of the others come to share it with me.”

With his broad little beak he made a dive at the tail, and pinching it tight he began to pull.

Now the tail did not belong to a worm at all, but to a little brown snake that had been lying there in the hole (which was its home) fast asleep.

When it felt some unseen thing nipping its tail and holding it, it was terribly frightened. It began to pull and struggle, trying to get loose, and Squdge kept pulling and trying to get it out. It must be a wonderfully fine fat worm to pull so hard, he thought, and the more it pulled the more determined he was to have it.

Before he could get it out, however, Queek and the others saw him, and up they ran, eager for a share of anything he might have caught.

They, too, seized hold of the tail and began to pull. All of them together were too strong for the snake. It had to come. Out they dragged it, out and out, longer and longer. Last of all its head slipped out from the hole. Then it twisted around, hissing with fright.

When the ducklings saw what they had caught—that it was not a worm but a SNAKE—they were so terrified that they fell over backward on the ground and lay there, afraid to move. They dared not even look to see whether the snake had gone or was making ready to swallow them. If they had only known it, it had been just as much frightened as they, and as soon as it was free it had slipped away into the water to nurse its pinched tail in quiet.

They were still lying there when their mother and Curly-Tail reached the place. At first Mother Duck did not know what had happened to them; she was afraid they were hurt or sick. But when she had helped them to their feet, and found they were only frightened and not hurt at all she began to laugh at them.

“But now you see, children,” she said more seriously, “what comes of being greedy. If you hadn’t been in such a hurry to catch the worm and gobble it down you would have waited till I came, and I could soon have told you it[35]
[36]
[37] was not a worm you had found, but a snake.”

The little ducks felt quite ashamed of themselves. They felt they had acted in a very silly and greedy manner. Moreover, they felt quite sad, for their mother said they were so hot and frightened she could not allow them to go into the water just yet. They would have to sit on the bank for a while and cool off.

Then she took Curly-Tail down to a shallow place in the river and caught a nice little tadpole for her, while her brothers and sisters had to sit in a row along the bank and look on.

It was not very long, however, before their mother called to them that they could come, and the little ducklings ran joyously down the slope and slipped off into the water. There they paddled up and down, and stood on their heads, and ran water races with each other as merrily as ever, their adventure with the snake quite forgotten.