“Oh, dear me!” she cried. “The sky is falling. I must go and tell the king!”
So she ran and ran until she met Henny Penny.
“Good morning, Chicken Little,” said Henny Penny. “Where are you going?”
“Oh, Henny Penny, the sky is falling, and I am going to tell the king!”
“How do you know the sky is falling?” asked Henny Penny.
“A piece of it fell on my head!” said Chicken Little.
“Then I will go with you,” said Henny Penny.
So they ran and ran until they met Turkey Lurkey.
“Good morning, Henny Penny and Chicken Little,” said Turkey Lurkey. “Where are the two of you going?”
“Oh, Turkey Lurkey, the sky is falling, and we are going to tell the king!” they said.
“How do you know the sky is falling?” asked Turkey Lurkey.
“Chicken Little told me,” said Henny Penny.
“A piece of it fell on my head!” said Chicken Little.
“Then I will go with you,” said Turkey Lurkey.
So they ran and ran until they met Ducky Lucky.
“Where are the three of you going?” he asked.
“The sky is falling, and we are going to tell the king,” answered Turkey Lurkey.
“How do you know the sky is falling?” asked Ducky Lucky.
“Henny Penny told me,” said Turkey Lurkey.
“Chicken Little told me,” said Henny Penny.
“A piece of it fell on my head!” said Chicken Little.
“Then I will go with you,” said Ducky Lucky.
So they ran and ran until they met Goosey Loosey, on her way to the bakery.
“Where are the four of you going?” she asked.
“The sky is falling, and we are going to tell the king,” answered Ducky Lucky.
“How do you know it is falling?” asked Goosey Loosey.
“Turkey Lurkey told me,” answered Ducky Lucky.
“Henny Penny told me,” said Turkey Lurkey.
“Chicken Little told me,” said Henny Penny.
“A piece of it fell on my head!” said Chicken Little.
“Then I will go with you,” said Goosey Loosey.
So they ran and ran until they met Foxy Loxy.
“My, my. Look at all these plump birds,” he said, licking his lips. “Where is everyone going?”
“The sky is falling, and we are going to tell the king,” they all replied together.
“But you are not going the right way,” said Foxy Loxy, squinting his wicked eyes. “Shall I show you the way to go?”
“Oh, certainly,” they all answered at once and followed Foxy Loxy, until they came to the door of his cave among the rocks.
“This is a short way to the king’s palace,” said Foxy Loxy.
Just as the little feathered folks were about to follow the fox into his cave, a little gray squirrel jumped out from behind the bushes and whispered to them, “If you go in, that fox will eat all of you!”
The little squirrel threw a big stone and hit the old fox right on the head.
“The sky surely is falling,” groaned Foxy Loxy, as he fell to the ground. Happy to escape from the wicked fox, the feathered friends thanked the squirrel and continued their journey to see the king.
By and by, they came to the palace where the wise king lived. Upon entering they all shouted at once, “King, we have come to warn you that the sky is falling!”
“How do you know the sky is falling?” asked the king.
“A piece of it fell on my head!” said Chicken Little.
“Come nearer, Chicken Little,” said the king and, leaning from his velvet throne, picked the acorn from the feathers of Chicken Little’s head. “You see, it was only an acorn and not part of the sky at all,” said the king.
Weary but wiser, the little feathered friends left the palace and started on their long journey home.
The Ugly Duckling
One sunny day on a little farm, there was a small pond where a duck was sitting on her nest. Four of the eggs were small, one was much larger than the rest, and all seemed ready to hatch.
The four little eggs cracked open and out popped four little ducklings, yellow as daffodils and pretty as could be. The mother duck was pleased, watching the ducklings peeping about the garden. “Just one more to go,” she said, turning her attention to the largest egg of all. But it did not open. So the mama duck waited.
At last the big egg cracked. “Honk, honk!” said the young one. The mother duck gasped, for the largest one was not yellow as a daffodil but an ashy gray. He must be a turkey, she thought. I have an idea. We’ll go swimming in the pond. Then I will know for sure. For every mother duck knows, turkeys cannot swim.
The mother duck went to the water with the five young ones following behind her. She jumped in with a splash. “Quack, quack,” she cried. One after another the little ones jumped in. The big one swam the fastest of all.
“Look how well he uses his legs!” said the mother. “That is not a turkey. He is my own child, and he is not so odd after all…if you look at him properly.”
After their morning swim, the mother duck took her ducklings to the farmyard to introduce them to the other ducks. Everywhere they went, there was whispering.
“Look how ugly that one is!” the other ducks said.
“Leave him alone,” the mother duck scolded. “He is a good creature, and he swims more beautifully than the rest.”
But the other ducks on the farm continued to tease him, laugh at him, and call him terrible names. One day, the ugly duckling was just too sad to stay on the farm any longer. He squeezed under the gate and, because he hadn’t learned to fly yet, he began to walk away.
Toward evening the ugly duckling reached a poor little cottage that seemed ready to collapse, and only remained standing because it could not decide on which side to fall first. The back door was not quite closed, so he slipped inside and went to sleep.
In the morning, the strange visitor was discovered by a tomcat and a hen. The tomcat purred at the duckling and the hen started to cluck.
“Can you lay eggs?” the hen asked.
“No.”
“Can you raise your back or purr?” asked the tomcat.
“No.”
“Well,” the hen said, “what can you do?”
The duckling thought for a while. “I like to swim,” he said.
“What an absurd idea,” said the hen. “You have nothing else to do, therefore you have foolish fancies. If you could purr or lay eggs, those thoughts would disappear.”
“But it is so delightful to swim,” said the duckling.
“Delightful, indeed!” said the hen. “Ask the cat—he is the cleverest animal I know—ask him how he would like to swim about on the water! Ask our mistress, the old woman—there is no one in the world more clever than she is. Do you think she would like to swim?”
“You don’t understand me,” said the duckling.
“Who can understand you, I wonder? Do you consider yourself cleverer than the cat or the old woman? Believe me, I speak only for your own good. I advise you to lay eggs and learn to purr as quickly as possible.”
“I think it’s time for me to go,” said the duckling.
So the duckling left the cottage and soon found a pond where he could swim and dive. But as winter approached, the air grew colder and colder. The duckling had to swim quickly on the water to keep from freezing, but every night the space on which he swam became smaller and smaller.
In the morning, a peasant found the duckling frozen to the ice. He broke the ice and carried the duckling home. The peasant and his wife revived the poor little creature. When the peasant’s children wanted to play with him, the duckling was frightened. He started up in terror and flew all around the kitchen, knocking over jars of food. The woman shooed the duckling through the open door, and he endured a hard winter all alone.
When spring came, the ugly duckling saw that everything aroun
d him had become beautiful. He raised his wings, and, to his delight, he was flying! He rose high into the air and flew until he reached a large garden with a lovely lake. Just in front of him he saw three beautiful swans swimming lightly over the smooth water. The duckling felt more unhappy than ever.
“I want to make friends with them, but I know they will not have me because I am too ugly.” Though he was afraid they would reject him, the duckling could not help but swim toward the beautiful strangers. He tried to hide his face by keeping his head bowed, but there, in the reflection of the water, he saw the most curious thing: Another swan was staring back at him. Why, it was him! He was a swan, too. The other swans rushed to meet him with outstretched wings. They stroked his neck with their bills, for this is the way swans say, “Hello.”
Soon a boy and a girl came into the garden with corn and pieces of bread, which they threw into the water.
“Look!” shouted the boy. “There is a new one!”
The girl said, “And he is the most beautiful of all!”
The newest swan rustled his feathers and cried out to the boy and girl with joy. And that is the story of the ugly duckling who became a swan.
Copyright
THE VELVETEEN RABBIT & OTHER STORIES. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 2007930293
First HarperFestival edition, 2008.
EPub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-202345-2
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The Velveteen Rabbit & Other Stories Page 4
