out?" And then they
learned what it was that Henrietta wanted them to see.

"Did you ever set eyes on such a fine family?" she demanded as she
stepped aside from her nest and let them peer into it.

"A brood of chicks--eh?" said the lady in white. "Well, what's all the
noise about?"

Henrietta Hen turned her back on her questioner.

"I knew you'd all want to have a look at these prize youngsters," she
said to the rest of the company. "You'll agree with me, of course, that
there were never any other chicks as handsome as these."

Henrietta's neighbors all crowded up to gaze upon the soft balls of down.

"This is the first family you've hatched, isn't it?" Polly Plymouth Rock
inquired.

Henrietta Hen said that it was her first brood.

Her neighbors wanted to be pleasant. So they told her that her children
were as fine youngsters as anybody could ask for. And the old white dame,
squinting at the nestlings, said to Henrietta:

"They're the finest you've ever had.... But there's one of them that has
a queer look."

All the other visitors tried to hush her up. They didn't want to hurt
Henrietta Hen's feelings. It was her first brood of chicks; and they
could forgive her for thinking them the best in the whole world. So when
they saw that old Whitey intended to be disagreeable they began to cluck
their approval of the youngsters, hoping that Henrietta wouldn't notice
what Whitey said.

Nor did she. Henrietta Hen was altogether too pleased with herself and
her new family to pay much attention to anybody else's remarks.

"I hope," said Henrietta, "that you'll all come to see my family often.
As the youngsters grow, I'm sure they'll get handsomer every day."

The neighbors thanked her. And crowding about old Whitey they moved away.
Old Whitey just had to go too. She couldn't help spluttering a little.

"What a vain, empty-headed creature Henrietta Hen is!" she exclaimed.
"She doesn't know that one of her brood is nothing but a duckling!"

III

WET FEET

Somehow Henrietta Hen never noticed that one of her brood was different
from the rest. They were her first youngsters and they all looked
beautiful to her.

Just as soon as Henrietta began to take her children for strolls about
the farmyard she taught them a number of things. She showed them how to
scratch in the dirt for food, how to drink by raising their heads and
letting the water trickle down their throats. She bade them beware of
hawks--and of