“It must be, Peter,” said he, “that my great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather lived just about the same time as your great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather, way back in the days when the world was young.  Perhaps they knew each other.  Perhaps they were acquainted just as you and I are now.  Anyway, according to what has been handed down in the family, Grandfather Quack was very much such a looking fellow as I am now, except in the matter of his bill and feet.  His bill was not broad like mine but more like the bills of other birds, and his feet were like the feet of Mr. Grouse and Bob White.  They were made for scratching, and there was nothing between the toes.  You see, Old Mother Nature was experimenting.  She made everybody a little different from everybody else and then started them forth in the Great World to shift for themselves and to find out what they really needed that they hadn’t got.

“Old Mr. Quack, my great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather, soon discovered one thing, and that was that his legs were too short for him to get around very fast.  When he walked, everybody laughed at him.  When he tried to run, they laughed harder than ever.  He didn’t mind this so very much, though he did a little.  Nobody likes to be laughed at, especially when it is because of something they cannot help.  But what he did mind was the fact that his neighbors could run about so much faster than he that they got all the best of the food, and quite often he went hungry.

“One day he happened to be sitting on the bank of the Smiling Pool, thinking the matter over and wondering what he had best do, when Mr. Fox stole up behind him and startled him so that he lost his balance and tumbled down the bank into the water.  This frightened him more than ever, and he flapped about and squawked and squawked and flapped until Mr. Fox nearly split his sides laughing at him.  And when he was quite out of breath, Mr. Quack discovered that he was making all this fuss for nothing.  He didn’t sink, but floated on the water, and what was more the water didn’t get under his feathers at all.  When he tried to walk, of course he couldn’t, and he had a funny feeling because his feet didn’t touch anything and felt so very useless.  But he kept moving them back and forth, and pretty soon he discovered that he moved ahead.  Of course he moved very slowly, because his feet were not made for use in the water, but he moved, and that was enough.  He knew then that he could get back to land.  Then he tried his wings and he found that he could rise into the air from the water quite as easily as from the land.  Right then and there all fear of the water left him.  In fact, he liked it.

“Little by little, Grandfather Quack began to understand that he had made a great discovery.  He had discovered the safest place in all the Great World for him.  Out on the water he was safe from Mr. Fox and Mr. Wolf and all the other four-footed hunters.  So he took to spending most of his time on the water or near it.  When he wanted a nap, he would hide among the rushes that grew in the water.  ’If only I didn’t have to leave the water for food!’ sighed Grandfather Quack.  ’If only I could find food here, I would never leave the water.’