"Oh, it won't hurt Splash," said the little boy. "Come on, Sue. Please let me put your half with my half of Splash in a cage."

"No, sir! Bunny Brown! I won't do it! You can't put my half of Splash in a cage. He won't like it."

"But, Sue, it's only a make-believe cage, just as he's a make-believe tiger."

"Oh, well, if it's only a make-believe cage, then, I don't care. But you mustn't hurt him, and you can't put any paint stripes on my half."

"No, I won't, Sue. Now let's go out to the barn and look to see where we can put up the trapezes and rings and things like that, and where I can hang by my feet and by my hands."

"Oh, Bunny! Are you going to do that?"

"Sure!" cried the little boy, as though it was as easy as eating a piece of strawberry shortcake. "You just watch me, Sue."

"Well, I don't want to do that," said Sue. "I'm just going to be a pretty lady and ride a white horse."

"But grandpa hasn't any white horses, Sue. They're brown."

"Well, I can sprinkle some talc.u.m powder on a brown horse and make him white," said the little girl. "Can't I?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Bunny. "That will be fine! But it will take an awful lot of talc.u.m powder to make a big horse all white, Sue."

"Well, I'll just make him spotted white then. I've got some talc.u.m powder of my own, and it smells awful good. I guess a horse would like it; don't you, Bunny?"

"I guess so, Sue. But come out to the barn."

Grandpa Brown had two barns on his farm. One was where the horses and cows were kept, and the other held wagons, carriages and machinery. It was in the horse-barn where the children went--the barn where there were big piles of sweet-smelling hay.

"I can fall on the hay, 'stead of falling in a net, like the circus men do," said Bunny.

"Anyhow, we haven't any circus net," suggested Sue.

"No," agreed Bunny. "But the hay is just as bouncy. I'm going to jump in it!"

He climbed up on the edge of the hay-mow, or place where the hay is kept, and jumped into the dried gra.s.s. For hay is just dried gra.s.s, you know.

Down into the hay bounced Bunny, and Sue bounced after him. The children jumped up and down in the hay, laughing and shouting. Then they played around the barn, trying to pretend that they were already having the circus in it.

"Oh, it will be such fun!" cried Sue.

"Jolly!" cried Bunny.

"Let's go and ask mother now," said Sue.

The children started for the house. On the way they had to pa.s.s a little pond of water. On the edge of it stood a hen, clucking and making a great fuss. She would run toward the water and then come back again, without getting her feet wet.

"Oh, the poor old hen!" cried Sue. "What's the matter? Oh, see, Bunny!

All her little chickens are in the water. Oh, Bunny! We must get them out for her. Oh, you poor old hen!"

CHAPTER IV

A STRANGE BOY

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue stood on the sh.o.r.e of the little pond, looking at the old hen, who was fluttering up and down, very much excited, clucking and calling as loudly as she could.

And, paddling up and down in the water in front of her, where the hen dared not go, for chickens don't like to get wet you know, paddling up and down in front of the hen were some soft, fluffy little b.a.l.l.s of downy feathers.

"Oh, her chickens will all be drowned!" cried Sue. "We must get them out, Bunny. Take off your shoes and stockings and wade in. I'll help you save the little chickens for the poor old hen."

Sue sat 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e 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.