Mother Etienne had given to a Cochin-China hen, which she had christened Yollande, some white duck’s eggs to sit on.  The batch of fifteen eggs had all come out.  It was really wonderful to see these fifteen baby ducks, yellow as canaries, beaks and webbed feet pink, swarming around the big patient sitting mother, ducking under her wings, to come out presently and clamber helter-skelter onto her broad back.  As often happens with nurses, Yollande loved the ducklings as her own children, and without worrying about their shape or plumage, so different from her own, she showered upon them proofs of the tenderest affection.  Did a fly pass within their reach, all these little ones jumped at it—­tumbling in their efforts to catch it.  The little yellow balls with their wide-awake air never took a second’s rest.

Well cared for and well fed, they grew so rapidly that soon they had to have more space.  Mother Etienne housed them then on the edge of the pond in a latticed coop opening onto a sloping board which led down to the water.  It was, as it were, a big swimming bath, which grew gradually deeper and deeper.  The ducks and geese loved to plunge in and hardly left the water except to take their meals.

Yollande felt very out of place in this new dwelling.  The ducklings on the contrary, urged on by their instinct, madly enjoyed it and rushed pell-mell into the water.

This inexplicable impulse terrified their mama.  She was, in fact, “as mad as a wet hen.”

She ran up and down, her feathers on end, her face swollen, her crest red, clucking away, trying to persuade her babies not to venture into the water.  For hens, like cats, hate the water.  It was unspeakable torture to her.  The children would not listen; deaf to her prayers, her cries, these rascally babies ventured farther and farther out.  They were at last and for the first time in their favourite element, lighter than little corks, they floated, dived, plunged, raced, fought, playing all sorts of tricks.

Meanwhile, Yollande was eating her heart out.  She rushed to and fro, keeping her eyes glued on the disobedient ones.  Suddenly she saw a mother-duck chasing her darlings.  This was more than she could bear,—­driven by her maternal instinct she leapt like a fury to the aid of her family.

A flap or two of her wings and she was above the water into which she fell at the deepest part.

Splashing,—­struggling madly in the midst of her frightened brood,—­she was soon exhausted and succumbing to syncope, she sank to the bottom.

The surface of the water closed above her.  The little ones did not realize what had happened—­very quickly recovering from their momentary fright, they went on with their games—­splashing the water with their beaks and amusing themselves as though nothing were the matter.