the money, two for a show, three to
make ready and FOUR to go!" and he yelled the "FOUR" real loudly.

Then they jumped in, Jimmie and Bully, ker-splash, ker-splosh, ker-splish,
ker-thump! Oh what a lot of water they scattered about, wetting Lulu and
Alice, but the girl ducks didn't mind it. Of course, Bully went right to
the bottom, and so did Jimmie, too. His head went right down in the mud,
the way Lulu's did that terrible day I told you about once. And poor
Jimmie's yellow feet were right up in the air, and that's where a duck's
feet ought never to be. Oh my, no! and some shingle nails besides.

Well, Jimmie tried to swim along under water, as he saw Bully doing, but
he couldn't. No, sir, not the least bit. You see the stone was too heavy,
and it held him down. Besides, his feet were out of the water, and as a
duck has to have his feet in water to swim with, of course, Jimmie
couldn't move along at all.

There he was, held down under water, and all the while his breath was
getting shorter and shorter, and he kept feeling worse and worse, and he
wished he had taken Lulu's advice and not tried to stand on his head and
dive.

Well, naturally, when Jimmie didn't come up in some time, Lulu and Alice
got worried. Bully popped up, after swimming across the pond under water
and out of sight, and they asked him what had become of Jimmie.

"I'll go look," he said, and when he dived down, and came back, he was
pale green instead of dark green as he usually was. You see he turned pale
green because he was so frightened.

"Oh, dear!" cried Bully. "Jimmie is held fast down there by the stone on
his neck, and can't get up."

"Can't you bite the stone loose?" asked Alice. Then Bully tried, but he
couldn't, and Lulu and Alice tried, but they couldn't. And there wasn't
any one else around to help, and it began to look pretty bad for poor
Jimmie.

And then, just as he surely thought he would never see his papa, and
mamma, and sisters, and Aunt Lettie again, who should come walking along
the bottom of the pond but the mud turtle fairy prince. He saw right away
what the matter was, and it didn't take him a second, with his sharp jaws,
to bite through the grass that held, the stone around Jimmie's neck, and
up popped the little boy duck!

His life had been saved just in time, let me tell you! And oh, how
thankful Alice and Lulu were, to say nothing of Jimmie; and how they
thanked the fairy prince.

"Maybe you will believe tha