r that Mrs. Quack
recovered her good nature at once. "No," said she, "it isn't. If I
hadn't seen her make it, I wouldn't have known it was a nest. You see,
one spring I got hurt so that I couldn't take my usual long journey to
the Far North and had to spend the summer way down in the Southland
where I always lived in the winter, and that is how I happened to learn
about Mrs. 'Gator's nest and eggs and a lot of other things. Mrs. 'Gator
is lazy, but she is smart. She's smart enough to make Mr. Sun do her
work. What do you think of that?"

Right away Peter was all excitement. You see, that sounded as if there
might be a story behind it. "I never have heard of such a thing!" he
cried. "How did she learn to do such a smart thing as that? Of course I
don't for a minute believe that she herself discovered a way to get Mr.
Sun to work for her. Probably it was her ever-so-great-grandmother who
first did it. Isn't that so, Mrs. Quack?"

Mrs. Quack nodded. "You've guessed it, Peter," said she. "It all
happened way, way back in the days when the world was young."

"Tell me about it! Please, please tell me about it, Mrs. Quack, and the
first chance I get, I'll do something for you," begged Peter.

Mrs. Quack carefully went over all her feathers to see that every one
was in place, for she is very particular about how she looks. When she
was quite satisfied, she turned to Peter, fidgeting on the bank.

"Way back in the days when the world was young," said she, "Old Mother
Nature made the first Alligators before she made the first birds, or the
first animals, so Old Ally and Mrs. 'Gator, who live way down south now,
belong to a very old family and are proud of it. In the beginning of
things there was very little dry land, as you may have heard, so old Mr.
and Mrs. 'Gator, who of course were not old then, were made to live in
the water with the fish. Old Mother Nature was experimenting then. She
was planning to make a great deal more land, and she wanted living
creatures on it, so she gave the 'Gators legs and feet instead of fins,
and lungs to breathe air instead of gills for breathing in the water as
fish do. Then, having many other things to attend to, she told them
they would have to take care of themselves, and went about her business.

"It didn't take Mr. and Mrs. 'Gator long to discover that their legs
were not of much use in the water, for they used their powerful tails
for swimming. Then one day Mrs. 'Gator crawled out on