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At length one shell cracked, and then another, and from each egg came a living creature that lifted its head and cried, "Peep, peep." "Quack, quack," said the mother, and then they all quacked as well as they could, and looked about them on every side at the large green leaves. Their mother allowed them to look as much as they liked, because green is good for the eyes.
Otherwise we were alone, intruders, suffered in the presence of a brooding nature only as long as we refrained from disturbances. Then at noon the vapours began to eddy, to open momentarily in revelation of vivid green glimpses, to stream down the rising wind. Pale sunlight dashed fitfully across us like a shower. Somewhere in the invisibility a duck quacked.
I quacked and clucked, but all to no purpose. I could not get them to venture in. Let me look at the egg. Yes, that is a turkey's egg; take my advice, leave it where it is and teach the other children to swim." "I think I will sit on it a little while longer," said the duck; "as I have sat so long already, a few days will be nothing." "Please yourself," said the old duck, and she went away.
Quack!" called the Duck who had been sitting on her nest so long. "My first egg is cracked, and I can see the broad yellow bill of my eldest child. Ah! Now I can see his downy white head." The Drake heard her and quacked the news to every one around, and flapped his wings, and preened his feathers, for was not this the first Duckling ever hatched on the farm?
But such ducks had never quacked, such geese had never waddled, such dogs had never barked fantastic as a nightmare too long too broad exaggerated out of all reality, they might have marched with Alice from Wonderland or from behind the Looking Glass. "I made them, Daddy." "You ." "Yes, do you like them?" "Aren't they a bit uncanny?" "We've sold dozens; the children adore them."
As we were passing along one morning, an Indian crew came dashing out in a canoe, with a deer for sale. There were stunted-looking squaws in the boat, and all quacked and gesticulated and grunted after the peculiar linguistic fashion of the neighborhood.
Over the marshes slow hawks sailed, rose, wheeled, and fell; the gray ducks, whose wings bear purple diamond-squares, quacked in the tussock ponds, guarded by their sentinels, the tall, blue herons. Everywhere the earth was sheeted with marsh-marigolds and violets. Across the distant grassy flat two deer moved, grazing.
For as her father whirled the crank, out of the horn, in a little procession, waddled the creatures who had quacked so persistently. There were six of them in all. Her father observed them gloomily. "That's the kind of ducks and drakes I've been making out of my money," he declared. The procession quacked loudly, as if glad to get out. And waddled toward the stream.
"Oh, dear! It's burglars! I know it's burglars!" cried Mrs. Wibblewobble. "Quack real loud, and call the police!" So Mr. Leander Wibblewobble quacked as loudly as he could, and just then Aunt Lettie jumped out of bed. "Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!" she cried, three times, just like that. "The house is on fire! The house is burning up! Run! Jump, everybody!"
Ducks complained vocally, and as they slipped on the glassy pond they quacked out a mournful protest against the times. The snow which fell did not melt, but shone under the red sunshine, powdered into dust beneath hoof and heel; every cart-rut was full of thin white ice, like ground window-glass, that cracked drily and split and tinkled to hobnails or iron-shod wheel.
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