in his line again, and the next time when he pulled it up
something came with it. Something wiggily, and black and yellow and
red-spotted with wrinkly legs and a long snaky neck and head.

"Ker-thump!" it landed on the bank and the boy ran up to it. "Why, I've
caught a mud turtle!" he cried.

"I am not!" the mud turtle called out, only he couldn't speak very
plainly, for the hook was in his mouth. "I'm a fairy prince, and you had
no right to catch me," he said.

Now, of course, the boy couldn't hear this, for he didn't understand the
language used by the fairy prince. But Alice heard him, and so did Lulu
and Jimmie.

"Oh, dear!" cried Alice. "That bad boy has caught the fairy prince! Let's
run out and make him let the prince go!"

"Oh, no!" answered Lulu, "the boy might catch us then."

"I know what let's do," whispered Jimmie. "We'll get in the bushes right
behind that boy, and quack and squawk as loud as we can: That will scare
him and make him run away. I don't believe the mud turtle is fairy prince,
but I don't want to see him hurt. Come on, girls. Now when I say: 'ready,'
quack real loud."

So the three duck children went softly up to a bush right behind where
that fisherman--I mean fisherboy--was sitting.

All this while the fairy prince was talking to the boy, and asking to be
let go, for the hook hurt him. The boy finally did take the hook out, not
hurting the mud-turtle any more than he could help, for he was not a bad
boy.

Then, in an instant, or maybe in an instant and a half, Jimmie cried,
"Ready!" and he and his sisters quacked as loudly as possible, or even
louder. The boy was just going to put the mud turtle into the basket, but
when he heard the quacking, coming right out of the bushes behind him, he
was so frightened that he dropped the fairy prince on the ground.

And the fairy prince crawled off as fast as he could, let me tell you.
Then the boy saw that it was the duck children who had frightened him, and
he laughed; but they didn't care, not a bit.

Then the boy said: "Oh, I guess there is no good fishing here. I'm going
to try a new place," so he walked away.

Then Alice went right up to the mud turtle and said: "O fairy prince, art
thou much hurt?"

"I am hurt considerable," said the mud turtle. "I am hurt in two ways. My
mouth hurts where the hook went in, and my feelings are hurt because the
boy didn't believe I was a fairy prince."

"Well, if you are a fairy prince," asked Jim