Then they jumped in, Jimmie and Bully, ker-splash, ker-splosh, ker-splish, ker-thump!  Oh what a lot of water they scattered about, wetting Lulu and Alice, but the girl ducks didn’t mind it.  Of course, Bully went right to the bottom, and so did Jimmie, too.  His head went right down in the mud, the way Lulu’s did that terrible day I told you about once.  And poor Jimmie’s yellow feet were right up in the air, and that’s where a duck’s feet ought never to be.  Oh my, no! and some shingle nails besides.

Well, Jimmie tried to swim along under water, as he saw Bully doing, but he couldn’t.  No, sir, not the least bit.  You see the stone was too heavy, and it held him down.  Besides, his feet were out of the water, and as a duck has to have his feet in water to swim with, of course, Jimmie couldn’t move along at all.

There he was, held down under water, and all the while his breath was getting shorter and shorter, and he kept feeling worse and worse, and he wished he had taken Lulu’s advice and not tried to stand on his head and dive.

Well, naturally, when Jimmie didn’t come up in some time, Lulu and Alice got worried.  Bully popped up, after swimming across the pond under water and out of sight, and they asked him what had become of Jimmie.

“I’ll go look,” he said, and when he dived down, and came back, he was pale green instead of dark green as he usually was.  You see he turned pale green because he was so frightened.

“Oh, dear!” cried Bully.  “Jimmie is held fast down there by the stone on his neck, and can’t get up.”

“Can’t you bite the stone loose?” asked Alice.  Then Bully tried, but he couldn’t, and Lulu and Alice tried, but they couldn’t.  And there wasn’t any one else around to help, and it began to look pretty bad for poor Jimmie.

And then, just as he surely thought he would never see his papa, and mamma, and sisters, and Aunt Lettie again, who should come walking along the bottom of the pond but the mud turtle fairy prince.  He saw right away what the matter was, and it didn’t take him a second, with his sharp jaws, to bite through the grass that held, the stone around Jimmie’s neck, and up popped the little boy duck!

His life had been saved just in time, let me tell you!  And oh, how thankful Alice and Lulu were, to say nothing of Jimmie; and how they thanked the fairy prince.

“Maybe you will believe that I am a fairy now,” said the mud turtle to Jimmie, and Jimmie said he would.  He also said he would never stand on his head again, with a stone tied around his neck, and I’m glad to say he never did.  Now, in case I should see a sky-blue-pink-green rose in blossom to-morrow I’ll tell you a story about Lulu, and how Aunt Lettie did her a great favor.

STORY XXI

LULU AND AUNT LETTIE

Lulu Wibblewobble was walking in the deep, dark woods, and, what is more, she was all alone.  Yes, and she wasn’t afraid.  You see, Jimmie had gone off with the boys in the lots back of the duck pond to play ball, and Alice had gone shopping with her mamma.  Lulu could have gone, too, only felt she would rather go walking in the woods, so she went.