Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus | Page 8

down on the ground, and began to take off her shoes.
Bunny began to laugh.
"Why, what--what's the matter?" asked Sue, and she seemed rather
surprised at Bunny's laughter. "Don't you want to save the little chicks
for the hen?" Sue went on. "Maybe somebody threw them in the water,
or maybe they fell in."
"Those aren't little chickens, Sue!" exclaimed Bunny, still laughing.
"Not chickens? They aren't? Then what are they?"
"Little ducks! That's the reason they went into the water. They know
how to swim when they're just hatched out of the eggs. They won't get
drowned."
Sue did not know what to say. She had never before seen any baby
ducks, and, at first, they did look like newly hatched chickens. But as
she watched them she saw they were swimming about, and, as one little
baby duck waddled out on the shore, Sue could see the webbed feet,

which were not at all like the claws of a chicken.
"But Bunny--Bunny--if they're little ducks and it doesn't hurt them to
go in the water, what makes the old hen so afraid?" Sue asked.
"I--I guess she thinks they are chickens. She doesn't know they are
ducks and can swim," said Bunny. "I guess that's it, Sue."
"Ha! Ha! Yes, that's it!" a voice exclaimed behind Bunny and Sue.
They looked around to see their Grandpa Brown looking at them and
laughing.
"The old hen doesn't know what to make of her little family going in
swimming," he went on. "You see, we put ducks' eggs under a hen to
hatch, Bunny and Sue. A hen can hatch any kind of eggs."
"Can a hen hatch ockstritches' eggs?" Sue wanted to know.
"Well, maybe not the eggs of an ostrich," answered Grandpa Brown. "I
guess a hen could only cover one of those at a time. But a hen can hatch
ducks' or turkeys' eggs as well as her own kind."
"So as we don't always have a duck that wants to hatch out little ones,
we put the ducks' eggs under a hen. And every time, as soon as the little
ducks find water, after they are hatched, they go in for a swim, just as if
they had a duck for a mother instead of a hen.
"And, of course, the mother hen thinks she has little chickens, for at
first she can't tell the little ducks from chickens. And when they go into
the water she thinks, just as you did, Sue, that they will be drowned. So
she makes a great fuss. But she soon gets over it."
"I guess she's over it now," said Bunny.
Indeed, the old mother hen was not clucking so loudly now, nor was
she rushing up and down on the shore of the pond with her wings all
fluffed up. She seemed to know that the little family she had hatched
out, even if they were not like any others she had taken care of, were all

right, and very nice. And she seemed to think that for them to go in the
water was all right, too.
As for the little ducklings, they paddled about, and quacked and
whistled (as baby ducks always do) and had a perfectly lovely time.
The old mother hen stood on the bank and watched them.
Pretty soon the ducks had had enough of swimming, and they came out
on dry land, waddling from side to side in the funny way ducks do
when they walk.
"Oh! How glad the old hen is to see them safe on shore again!" cried
Sue.
And, indeed, the mother hen did seem glad to have her family with her
once more. She clucked over them, and tried to hover them under her
warm wings, thinking, maybe, that she would dry them after their bath.
But ducks' feathers do not get wet in the water the way the feathers of
chickens do, for ducks feathers have a sort of oil in them. So the little
ducks did not need to get dry. They ran about in the sun, quacking in
their baby voices, and the mother hen followed them about, clucking
and scratching in the gravel to dig up things for them to eat.
"They'll be all right now," said Grandpa Brown. "The next time the
little ducks go into the water the old hen mother won't be at all
frightened, for she will know it is all right. This always happens when
we let a chicken hatch out ducks' eggs."
"And I thought the little chickens were drowning!" laughed Sue, as she
put on her shoes again.
"Well, that's just what the mother hen thought," said Grandpa Brown.
"But what have you children been doing?"
"Getting ready for a circus," answered Bunny Brown.
"A circus!" exclaimed