ttle birds of my dreams were a reality.
There were twenty-four of them. They had been hatched by two hens, of
whom one, the big, black one, was an inmate of the house, while the
other was borrowed from a neighbor.

To bring them up, the former is sufficient, so careful is she of her
adopted family. At first, everything goes perfectly: a tub with two
fingers' depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days, the ducklings
bathe in it under the anxious eye of the hen.

A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough. It contains neither
cresses crammed with tiny shellfish nor worms and tadpoles, dainty
morsels both. The time has come for dives and hunts amid the tangle of
the water weeds; and for us the day of trouble has also come. True, the
miller, down by the brook, has fine ducks, easy and cheap to bring up;
the tallow smelter, who has extolled his burnt fat so loudly, has some
as well, for he has the advantage of the waste water from the spring at
the bottom of the village; but how are we, right up there, at the top,
to procure aquatic sports for our broods? In summer, we have hardly
water to drink!

Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty source trickles into a
basin made in the rock.. Four or five families have, like ourselves,
to draw their water there with copper pails. By the time that the
schoolmaster's donkey has slaked her thirst and the neighbors have
taken their provision for the day, the basin is dry. We have to wait for
four-and-twenty hours for it to fill. No, this is not the hole in which
the ducks would delight nor indeed in which they would be tolerated.

There remains the brook. To go down to it with the troop of ducklings is
fraught with danger. On the way through the village, we might meet cats,
bold ravishers of small poultry; some surly mongrel might frighten and
scatter the little band; and it would be a hard puzzle to collect it in
its entirety. We must avoid the traffic and take refuge in peaceful and
sequestered spots.

On the hills, the path that climbs behind the chateau soon takes a
sudden turn and widens into a small plain beside the meadows. It skirts
a rocky slope whence trickles, level with the ground, a streamlet,
forming a pond of some size. Here profound solitude reigns all day long.
The ducklings will be well off; and the journey can be made in peace by
a deserted footpath.

You, little man, shall take them to that delectable spot. What a day
it was that marked my first