d," said
Tom Seymour, "you ought to raise ducks--you've got a capital place for
ducks there."

"Yes, but I've bought _hens_, you see," said Freddy; "so it's no use
trying."

"No use! Of course there is! Just as if your hens couldn't hatch ducks'
eggs. Now, you just wait till one of your hens wants to set, and you put
ducks' eggs under her, and you'll have a family of ducks in a twinkling.
You can buy ducks' eggs, a plenty, of old Sam under the hill; he always
has hens hatch his ducks."

So Freddy thought it would be a good experiment, and informed his mother
the next morning that he intended to furnish the ducks for the next
Christmas dinner; and when she wondered how he was to come by them,
he said, mysteriously, "O, I will show you how!" but did not further
explain himself. The next day he went with Tom Seymour, and made a trade
with old Sam, and gave him a middle-aged jack-knife for eight of his
ducks' eggs. Sam, by the bye, was a woolly-headed old negro man, who
lived by the pond hard by, and who had long cast envying eyes on Fred's
jack-knife, because it was of extra-fine steel, having been a Christmas
present the year before. But Fred knew very well there were any number
more of jack-knives where that came from, and that, in order to get a
new one, he must dispose of the old; so he made the trade and came home
rejoicing.

Now, about this time Mrs. Feathertop, having laid her eggs daily with
great credit to herself, notwithstanding Mrs. Scratchard's predictions,
began to find herself suddenly attacked with nervous symptoms. She lost
her gay spirits, grew dumpish and morose, stuck up her feathers in a
bristling way, and pecked at her neighbors if they did so much as
look at her. Master Gray Cock was greatly concerned, and went to old
Doctor Peppercorn, who looked solemn and recommended an infusion of
angle-worms, and said he would look in on the patient twice a day till
she was better.

"Gracious me, Gray Cock!" said old Goody Kertarkut, who had been
lolling at the corner as he passed, "a'n't you a fool?--cocks always
are fools. Don't you know what's the matter with your wife? She wants
to set--that's all; and you just let her set! A fiddlestick for Doctor
Peppercorn! Why, any good old hen that has brought up a family knows
more than a doctor about such things. You just go home and tell her to
set, if she wants to, and behave herself."

When Gray Cock came home, he found that Master Freddy had been before
h