There were twenty-four of them. They had been hatched by two hens,
of whom one, the big, black one, was an inmate of the house, while
the other was borrowed from a neighbor.

To bring them up, the former is sufficient, so careful is she of
her adopted family. At first, everything goes perfectly: a tub
with two fingers' depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days,
the ducklings bathe in it under the anxious eye of the hen.

A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough. It contains
neither cresses crammed with tiny shellfish nor worms and tadpoles,
dainty morsels both. The time has come for dives and hunts amid
the tangle of the water weeds; and for us the day of trouble has
also come. True, the miller, down by the brook, has fine ducks,
easy and cheap to bring up; the tallow smelter, who has extolled
his burnt fat so loudly, has some as well, for he has the advantage
of the waste water from the spring at the bottom of the village;
but how are we, right up there, at the top, to procure aquatic
sports for our broods? In summer, we have hardly water to drink!

Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty source trickles
into a basin made in the rock. . Four or five families have, like
ourselves, to draw their water there with copper pails. By the
time that the schoolmaster's donkey has slaked her thirst and the
neighbors have taken their provision for the day, the basin is dry.
We have to wait for four-and-twenty hours for it to fill. No, this
is not the hole in which the ducks would delight nor indeed in
which they would be tolerated.

There remains the brook. To go down to it with the troop of