was driving some young ducklings before her.]

Hardly was the song ended when he saw Emmerence coming toward him from
the brick-yard. With a dry fir-twig she was driving some young
ducklings before her. On coming up to Ivo she stopped and began to
talk.

"Oh, you can't think," said she, "what trouble I had getting my four
ducklings out of the puddle in the brickyard. Four gray ones and two
white, you see. They're just a week old now. Only think, my mother made
a hen sit on the eggs, and now the hen won't take care of 'em: they run
about, and nobody looks after 'em at all."

"They're orphans," said Ivo, "and you must be their mother."

"Yes, and you don't know how pitifully they can look at you
one-sided,'--this way." She laid her head on one side, and looked up at
Ivo prettily enough.

"Look at them," said he: "they can't be quiet a minute, they keep
splashing and floundering about all the time. It 'ould make me giddy to
go on that way."

"I can't see," said Emmerence, looking very thoughtful, "how these
ducklings found out that they can swim. If a duck had hatched 'em out,
she might show 'em; but the hen never looked at 'em; and, for all that,
as fast as they could waddle they toddled on till they got into the
water."

Here the thoughts of two infant souls stood at the mysterious portal of
nature. There was silence a little while, and then Ivo said,--

"The ducklings all keep together and never part. My mother said we must
do so too; and brothers and sisters belong together; and, when the
cluck culls, all the chickens run up."

"Oh, the nasty chickens! The great big things eat up all I bring my
poor ducklings. If it would only rain right hard once more and make my
ducklings grow! At night I always put 'em in a basket,--they're too
soft to take in your hand,--and then they crowd up to each other, just
as I crowd up to my grandmother; and my grandmother says when they grow
up she'll pull out the feathers and make me a pillow."

Thus chatted Emmerence. Ivo suddenly began to sing,--

"Far up on the hill is a white, white horse,
A horse as white as snow;
He'll take the little boys that are good little boys
To where they want to go."

Emmerence fell in,--

"The little boys and the good little boys
Sha'n't go too far away;
The little girls that are good little girls
Must go as far as they."

Ivo went on:-