o write--the part that it
will be good to read.

When at last Quackalina, turning, said to herself, "I must go ashore now
and look after my little steppies," she raised her eyes and looked
before her to see just where she was. And then the vision she seemed to
see was so strange and so beautiful that--well, she said afterwards that
she never knew just how she bore it.

Just before her, on the water, swimming easily on its trusty surface,
were ten little ugly, smoky, "beautiful" ducks! Ten little ducks that
looked precisely like every one of Quackalina's relations! And now they
saw her and began swimming towards her.

Before she knew it, Quackalina had flapped her great wings and quacked
aloud three times, and three times again! And she didn't know she was
doing it, either.

She did know, though, that in less time than it has taken to tell it,
her own ten beautiful ducks were close about her, and that she was
kissing each one somewhere with her great red bill. And then she saw
that upon the bank a nervous, hysterical guinea-hen was tearing along,
and in a voice like a carving-knife screeching aloud with terror. It
went through Quackalina's bosom like a neuralgia, but she didn't mind it
very much. Indeed, she forgot it instantly when she looked down upon her
ducklings again, and she even forgot to think about it any more. And so
it was that the beautiful thing that was happening on the bank, under
her very eyes almost, never came to Quackalina's knowledge at all.

When her own bosom was as full of joy as it could be, why should she
have turned at the sound of the carving-knife voice to look ashore, and
to notice that at its first note there were twenty little pocket-knife
answers from over the pond, and that in a twinkling twenty pairs of red
satin boots were running as fast as they could go to meet the great
speckled mother-hen, whose blady voice was the sweetest music in all the
world to them?

When, after quite a long time, Quackalina began to realize things, and
thought of the little guineas, and said to herself, "Goodness gracious
me!" she looked anxiously ashore for them, but not a red boot could she
see. The whole delighted guinea family were at that moment having a
happy time away off in the cornfield out of sight and hearing.

This was very startling, and Quackalina grieved a little because she
couldn't grieve more. She didn't understand it at all, and it made her
almost afraid to go ashore, so she kept h