Over in the garden were pretty flowers called Bleeding Hearts. They
were very pink, and Jehosophat's face turned the very same colour. Well
_he_ knew who had stolen into the House of the White Wyandottes and
put that big duck's egg under Old Mother Hen. And now it had turned out
a real little duckling, that black little fellow Mother Wyandotte was
scolding so.

"Don't--don't--don't--don't you do it," she was shouting still.

But little black Duckie had made up his mind. He was headed straight for
that shining water.

Around Mother Wyandotte gathered all her relatives to talk over the matter.
They were disgusted. That one of their family should disgrace them so!

"Respectable chickens spend their time on the ground," said Granny
Wyandotte with a toss of her comb, "and never, never get wet, if they can
help it, not even their feet."

"True--true--quite true," all the Wyandotte Aunties agreed.

But their second cousins and the third cousins too, the ducks and the geese
and the swans, said they were wrong.

"Little Duckie's a sensible chap. What better place can there be to play in
than that nice cool pond?"

And all the fishes swimming around, from the big pickerel down to the
littlest "minnie," waggled their fins and tails to show they agreed too,
while the froggies on the lily-pad croaked: