sad, for their mother said they were so hot and frightened she could not allow them to go into the water just yet. They would have to sit on the bank for a while and cool off.

Then she took Curly-Tail down to a shallow place in the river and caught a nice little tadpole for her, while her brothers and sisters had to sit in a row along the bank and look on.

It was not very long, however, before their mother called to them that they could come, and the little ducklings ran joyously down the slope and slipped off into the water. There they paddled up and down, and stood on their heads, and ran water races with each other as merrily as ever, their adventure with the snake quite forgotten.

V

WHEN the ducklings stayed at home instead of going to the river (that was when it was too cold and stormy for them to swim) they had a number of toys to play with. Squdge and Queek had a little cart, and they had a tame beetle that they had trained to pull it. Sometimes they gave the dolls a ride in the cart. There were two dolls; one belonged to Fluffy, and one belonged to Curly-Tail. Mrs. Muskrat had made the dolls for them;—the same old muskrat who had made the picnic basket for their mother. The dolls were made of two old gnarled pieces of root that Mrs. Muskrat had gnawed and shaped with her sharp teeth until they looked just like two little wooden ducklings.

The two fowls were pleased to see each other

Fluffy and Curly-Tail loved these two little[39]
[40]
[41] duckling dolls better than anything they had; they dressed and undressed them, and took them to bed with them at night, and sometimes even took them down to the river with them.

The other ducklings often wished they had dolls, too, but Mrs. Muskrat had only made the two, one for Fluffy, and one for Curly-Tail. The way she had happened to make the dolls for them and not for the others was this:

One day the duck family had gone down to the river for their usual swim, and afterward Mother Duck felt very sleepy. She sat down on the bank in the warm sun, and all the little ducklings sat around her, and blinked and blinked, and after a while they all went to sleep. The ducklings were the first to waken. They opened their eyes and stirred about, and presently they said, “Mother, may we go up the river bank a little way?” For they were tired of staying in one place.

Mother Duck was too sleepy to do more than open her eyes a tiny crack. “Yes; only don’t go too far, and don’t go in the water.”

The little ducks promised they wouldn’t, and then they ran merrily away together.

Soon they came to a place where the bank was quite high and overhung the water. Here they began to amuse themselves by pushing bits of mud and pebbles over into the water to make a splash.

Presently they heard something stirring and rustling down there beneath. They stopped and listened and looked. Squdge and Pin-Toes even crept to the edge of the bank and leaned far over trying to see what was there. Fluffy was afraid if they did not take care they might fall into the river.

Instead of taking it Bright Eyes looked quite disgusted

Suddenly out from under the bank swam old Mrs. Muskrat. Her house was just exactly under where the ducklings were standing, though they had not known it. She had been