There's nothing like a stomach full To make the heart feel
light; To chase away the clouds of care And make the
world seem bright.

That's a fact. A full stomach makes the whole world seem different,
brighter, better, and more worth living in. It is the hardest kind
of hard work to be cheerful and see only the bright side of things
when your stomach is empty. But once fill that empty stomach, and
everything is changed. It was just that way with Mrs. Quack. For
days at a time she hadn't had a full stomach because of the hunters
with their terrible guns, and when just before dark that night she
returned to the Smiling Pool, her stomach was quite empty.

"I don't suppose I'll find much to eat here, but a little in peace
and safety is better than a feast with worry and danger," said she,
swimming over to the brown, broken-down bulrushes on one side of
the Smiling Pool and appearing to stand on her head as she plunged
it under water and searched in the mud on the bottom for food.
Peter Rabbit looked over at Jerry Muskrat sitting on the Big Rock,
and Jerry winked. In a minute up bobbed the head of Mrs. Quack,
and there was both a pleased and a worried look on her face. She
had found some of the corn left there by Farmer Brown's boy. At once
she swam out to the middle of the Smiling Pool, looking suspiciously
this way and that way.

"There is corn over there," said she. "Do you know how it came
there?"

"I saw Farmer Brown's boy throwing something over there," replied