d hope not!" said Polly Plymouth Rock with a shrug of her fine shoulders. And all the others agreed that they wanted no swimmers in their families.[Pg 17]

Henrietta Hen announced that she was sorry for them. "Every brood," she declared, "should have at least one swimmer in it." She began to strut up and down the edge of the duck-pond, clucking in a most overbearing fashion. Really, she had never felt quite so important before—not even when her first brood pecked their way out of their shells.

"There's nothing quite like swimming," Henrietta Hen remarked with a silly smirk. "If it weren't for getting my feet wet I'd be tempted to learn myself. No doubt my son could teach me."

"Your son!" the old white hen sniffed. "He's not your son, Henrietta Hen. Somebody played a joke on you. Somebody put a duck's egg under you while you were hatching your eggs. And I think I can guess who it was that did it."

For just a moment Henrietta Hen stood[Pg 18] still. The news almost took her breath away. Her comb trembled on the top of her head. She even stopped clucking. And she looked from one to another of her companions as if in hopes of finding one face, at least, that looked doubtful.... Alas! Everybody appeared to agree with old Whitey.

"If this is so," Henrietta muttered at last, "it's strange nobody ever noticed before that there was a duckling in my brood."

"We knew from the very first!" Polly Plymouth Rock told her. "You were the only one on the farm that didn't see that one of your family was different from the rest."

All this time the young duckling was swimming further and further away. He seemed to have forgotten all about his foster mother.[Pg 19]

Henrietta Hen took one long last