swimming further and further away.
He seemed to have forgotten all about his foster mother.

Henrietta Hen took one long last look at him. She guessed that she might
have stood there forever cackling for him to come back and he wouldn't
have paid the slightest heed to her.

Then she gathered her children--her really own--about her. "Come!" she
said to them, "We'll go back home now."

"What about him?" they demanded, pointing to the truant duckling who was
bobbing about on the rippling water. "Aren't you going to make him come,
too?"

"No!" said their mother. "We're well rid of him. He has been more trouble
to me than all the rest of you.... To tell the truth, I never liked him
very well."

V

CAUGHT BY MR. CROW

It wasn't far to the edge of the cornfield from the farmyard fence. And
Henrietta Hen was quick to discover that the freshly ploughed and
harrowed field offered a fine place to scratch for all kinds of worms and
bugs and grubs.

Not being what you might call a wise bird--like old Mr. Crow--Henrietta
didn't know that Farmer Green had carefully planted corn in that field,
in long rows. She did exclaim, however, that she was in great luck when
now and then she unearthed a few kernels of corn. But she wasn't
_looking_ for corn. She merely ate it when she happened to find any.

It is no wonder, then, that she was amazed when a hoarse voice suddenly
cried right in her ear, almost, "You're a thief and you can't deny it!"

She jumped. How could she have helped it? And the voice exclaimed,
"There! You're guilty or you'd never have jumped like that."

Turning, Henrietta saw that a black, beady-eyed gentleman was staring at
her sternly.

"It takes Mr. Crow to catch 'em," he croaked. "He can tell a corn-thief
half a mile away."

All this time Henrietta Hen hadn't said a word. At first she was too
surprised. And afterward she was too angry.

"Why don't you speak?" he demanded. He dearly loved a quarrel. And
somehow it wasn't much fun quarrelling with anybody when the other party
wouldn't say a word.

Still Henrietta Hen didn't open her mouth. She puzzled Mr. Crow. He even
forgot his rage (for it always made him angry if anybody but himself
scratched up any corn).

"What's the matter with you?" he asked. "What's the reason you don't
speak?"

"I'm too proud to talk with you," said Henrietta Hen. "I don't care to be
seen speaking to you, sir."

"Ha!" Mr. Crow exploded. "Don't you think I'm as go