In the Duck Yard

"But amusement helps, too. The neighboring hens will soon be coming to visit us; there are two Chinese hens among them. They wear breeches, are well educated, and have been imported, so they stand higher than the others in my esteem."

And the hens came, and the Cock came with them; today he was polite enough not to be rude.

"You're a true songbird," he said, "and you do all you possibly can with such a small voice as yours. But you should have a little steam power, so everyone would hear that you are a male."

The two Chinese were enraptured at the appearance of the Songbird. He was still very much rumpled up after his bath, so he looked to them like a little China chicken.

"He's charming!" they cried, and then engaged themselves in conversation with him; they talked in whispers and with a p -sound, in elegant Chinese. "We belong to your race.

"The Ducks, even the Portuguese one, are swimming birds, as you must have noticed. You don't know us yet; not very many people take the trouble to know us - not even any of the hens, though we were born to occupy a higher perch than most of the others. But that doesn't bother us; we go our way quietly among the others, whose ideals are quite different from ours. We look only at the bright side of things, and mention only what's good, though it's sometimes difficult to find something like that when there isn't anything. Besides us two and the Cock, there is no one in the whole hen yard who is talented. And honesty does not exist among the inhabitants of this duck yard.

"We warn you, little Songbird, don't trust that one over there with the short feathers in her tail - she's tricky. The spotted one there, with the crooked stripes on her wings, is always looking for an argument and won't let anybody have the last word, though she's always in the wrong. The fat Duck over there never has a good thing to say about anybody, and that is contrary to our nature; if we haven't something good to say, we keep our beaks shut. The Portuguese is the only one who has a little education and whom one can associate with, but she's hot-tempered and talks too much about Portugal.