Seven O'Clock Stories by Anderson, Robert Gordon

The little chicks are the ones Hepzebiah loves best. She can hold them in her two hands like little soft yellow balls or the powder puffs which Nurse uses on new little babies. The little chicks have such tiny voices, crying "cheep, cheep, cheep," almost the way the crickets do all through the night.

The chickens have cousins who--but there goes the clock--so that is tomorrow night's story.

THIRD NIGHT

NOISY FOLKS

Do you remember what we were telling about last night when that little tongue told us to stop? The little tongue in the Clock-with-the-Wise-Face on the mantel?

Oh yes, the first cousins of the chickens who lived in the yard of the three happy children.

Their first cousins are called ducks. Most of them are white but a few are black. Their coats are very smooth, and the skin under them sends out little drops of oil like drops of perspiration. This keeps the water and the rain from wetting the ducks through and through. You have heard people say sometimes: "The way water runs off a duck's back." Well, now you know the reason why.

In rainy weather Hepzebiah wears a blue waterproof with a little hood but the ducks do not need anything like that. Their everyday coats of white and black are just as good. If the White Wyandottes cannot get under the chicken coop or the barn quick enough when it rains, their feathers are all mussed up but the ducks seem always dressed in their best.

Their bills are different from their relatives'. They are not short and pointed like the chicken's but broad and long.

And they have what are called web feet. Between the toes are pieces of skin, thick and tough like canvas. These web feet are like small oars or paddles. With them they can push against the water of the pond and swim quite fast.

The ducks are very fond of the pond but their cousins think it a dreadful place.

"Cluck, cluck," say the White Wyandottes, "what a foolish way of spending your time, sailing on the water when there are fat, brown worms to dig for in the nice earth!"

You see animals, like people, like different things. The world wouldn't be half so interesting if we all liked the _same_ things, would it?

The other night Jehosophat felt very foolish when he came in to supper. His mother looked behind his ears and said: "Why you are just as afraid of the water as the chickens."

Did you ever hear of such a thing!

Now the chickens have _second_ cousins too. Their second cousins are the white geese.

They live on the other side of the tall fence that looks as if it were made of crocheted wire. Sometimes Jehosophat's father opens the gate in the fence and lets the geese wander down to the pond. A silly way they have of stretching out their long white necks and crying, "Hiss, hiss!" This frightens Hepzebiah who always runs away. Then the geese waddle along in single file, that is one by one, like fat old ladies crossing a muddy street on their way to sewing society.