e did this just because, as he said, "That old black duck 'll hatch out
as many eggs again as a guinea-hen will, an' the guinea 'll cover her
ten eggs _easy_. I'm goin' to swap 'em." And "swap 'em" he did.

Nobody knows how the guinea-hen liked her sitting, for none but herself
and the boy knew where her nest was hidden in a pile of old rubbish down
by the cow-pond.

[Illustration: "MADE HER PUT OUT HER TONGUE"]

When a night had passed, and a new day showed poor Quackalina the twenty
little eggs actually under her breast--eggs so little that she could
roll two at once under her foot--she did not know what to think. But
like many patient people when great sorrows come, she kept very still
and never told her fears.

She had never seen a guinea egg before in all her life. There were
birds' nests in some of the reeds along shore, and she knew their little
toy eggs. She knew the eggs of snakes, too, and of terrapins, or
"tarrups," as they are called by the farmer folk along the bay.

When first she discovered the trouble in the nest she thought of these,
and the very idea of a great procession of little turtles starting out
from under her some fine morning startled her so that her head lay limp
against the golden-rod for fully thirteen seconds. Then she got better,
but it was not until she had taken a nip at the pepper-grass that she
was sufficiently warmed up to hold up her head and think. And when she
thought, she was comforted. These dainty pointed eggs were not in the
least like the soft clumsy "double-enders" that the turtles lay in the
sand. Besides, how could turtle-eggs have gotten there anyway? How much
easier for one head to go wrong than twenty eggs.

She chuckled at the very folly of her fears, and nestling down into the
place, she soon began to nod. And presently she had a funny, funny
dream, which is much too long to go into this story, which is a great
pity, for her dream is quite as interesting as the real story, although
it is not half so true.

Sitting-time, after this, seemed very long to Quackalina, but after a
while she began to know by various little stirrings under her downy
breast that it was almost over. At the first real movement against her
wing she felt as if everything about her was singing and saying,
"mother! mother!" and bowing to her.

Even the pepper-grass nodded and the golden-rod, and careless roosters
as they passed _seemed_ to lower their combs to her and to forget
themselves,