“That’s what we’ll do!” Bunny cried.  “I’m glad you thought of it, Sue.  We’ll give the old hen a sail, and the ducks can paddle around with us.”

Bunny steered the raft over to the shore where the hen was clucking away, calling to her ducklings to come to dry land.  Perhaps she thought they had been in bathing long enough.

“Can we catch her?” asked Sue.  “You know it’s hard work to catch a chicken.  You couldn’t catch the old rooster.”

“Oh, this is easier,” Bunny said.  “The hen mother won’t run away from her little ducks.”

And, for a wonder, Bunny was right.  But then, as Grandma Brown told him afterward, the old hen was a very tame one, and was used to being picked up and petted.

So when Bunny and Sue reached the shore the hen did not run away.  She let Bunny pick her up, and she only clucked a little when he set her down in a dry place on the door raft.

“Now we’ll go sailing again,” Bunny said, as he pushed off from the shore.

The old hen clucked and fluttered her wings.  She was calling to her little ducks.  And they came right up on to the raft, too.  Perhaps they wanted to see what sailing was like, and then, too, they may have had enough of swimming and paddling for a time.  At any rate, there the old mother hen and her little ducks were on the raft, with the two children.

“Now we’ll give them a fine ride!” cried Sue.  “Aren’t they cute, Bunny?”

“Yes,” said Bunny.  He steered the raft, while Sue picked up one of the little ducks and petted it in her hand.

“Oh, you dear, cute, sweet little thing!” murmured Sue.  “I wish I had you for a doll!”

On and on sailed Bunny and Sue, and I think it was the first time the old hen mother ever went sailing with her family of ducks.  She seemed to like it, too, Bunny and Sue thought.

Finally, when the raft was in the middle of the pond, the little ducks gave some quacks, a sort of whistle and into the water they fluttered one after the other.

“Cluck!  Cluck!  Cluck!” went the hen mamma, fluttering her wings.  “Cluckity-cluck-cluck!”

I suppose that meant, in hen talk: 

“Come back!  Come back!  Stay on the boat and have a nice ride!”

But the little ducks wanted to swim in the water.  And they did.

“Never mind,” said Sue.  “We’ll keep on sailing, Bunny, and we’ll sail right after the little ducks, so the hen mamma can watch them.”

And this the children did.  The little ducks paddled around in the water at the edge of the raft, and on the middle of it, in a dry place, perched the hen mother.  It was great fun, and Bunny and Sue liked it very much.

“She is just like a trained hen,” said Bunny.  “If we have another and bigger circus, Sue, we can have this hen in it.”

“Are we going to have another circus?”

“Maybe—­a big one, in two tents.  Bunker Blue and Ben are talking about it.”