While they were swimming away, having lots of fun, and far enough off so that Grandfather Goosey-Gander could read his paper in peace, who should come down to the edge of the pond but the rooster.  His name was Mr. Cock A. Doodle, and he was very proud.  He walked right down to the edge of the water, and looked at the ducks.  Then he crowed as loud as he could, and flapped his wings, just as if he were saying: 

“There!  I’d like to see any of you do that!  Ha!  Hum!  Oh my, yes, indeed!”

“How do you do, Mr. Cock A. Doodle?” asked Jimmie.

“Ahem!  I am pretty well, my young friend,” replied the rooster.  “And how may you happen to be to-day?  And how are your sisters, Lulu and Alice Wibblewobble?”

“We are very well,” answered Lulu and Alice, and Lulu went on:  “Don’t you wish you could swim, Mr. Doodle?”

“I can,” said the rooster, and he strutted back and forth at the edge of the pond.  “Certainly I can swim.  What put the notion into your heads that I can’t?”

“We never saw you,” spoke Jimmie.

“Ahem!  Perhaps not.  You never saw me stand on one foot and jump over a barrel, but that doesn’t prove that I can’t do it,” replied Mr. Doodle.  “I can swim if I choose.  I have never cared to, that’s all.”

“Try now,” suggested Lulu, for she didn’t believe that rooster could swim, no matter what he said.

“Oh, the water is too cold to go swimming now,” said Mr. Doodle.  “I never swim in cold water.”

“Why, it’s as warm as warm can be,” declared Alice, and she splashed a few drops upon the rooster, so he could feel it.

“Well, er—­ahem!  The wind is blowing too much,” said the rooster, when he felt the nice, warm water.

“Why, it doesn’t blow at all,” answered Jimmie.

“Well, I haven’t my swimming shoes on,” objected Mr. Cock A. Doodle.  “I can’t swim without them.  You ducks have pieces of skin between your toes, so the water won’t slip through, but I haven’t my webbed feet on.”

“Oh, that is very easily fixed,” said Lulu.  “We will take some pieces of cloth, and tie them over your claws to make them like ours.  Do you think you could swim then?”

“Yes,” answered the rooster, “I think I could.”  You see he had no more excuses to make.  Oh, wasn’t he a tricky old rooster, though, eh?

So Lulu and Jimmie got some bits of cloth, and, with long pieces of ribbon grass, they bound the cloth on the rooster’s claws so his feet looked something like a duck’s.

“Now come on and we’ll have a swimming race,” suggested Jimmie.  “Walk right down into the water as we do.  It won’t hurt you the least bit, Mr. Doodle.”

“Pooh!  Do you think I’m afraid?” inquired Mr. Doodle, and he actually did walk right into the water, while all the ducks and chickens and geese looked on in wonder, for they had never seen the rooster swim, and didn’t believe he could.  Oh, but Mr. Doodle was proud!  He even tried to crow as he stepped into the water, but, as he wasn’t used to it, it made his breath feel just as if it were choking him when he tried to swallow.