Once upon a time, in a snowy land far away, the penguin children came out to play. With feathers as white as the falling snow, and feet all covered with black, they seemed just like snowflakes that had come down from the sky.
They waddled here and there and played hide and seek and tag. They jumped and splashed in the little ponds of water, and built ice houses, and had great fun.
“Oh my!” said Polly, a mother penguin, looking out of her house one morning. “Look at the naughty little children! They are going to slide down the hill! I suppose I must stop them.”
From her door Polly could see the snowy hill where the young penguins were sliding down to the very pond where she kept house with her little enabled to hear the merry calls and shouts of the young ones.
“Let us go across the pond and slide on the hill,” said flipper to that wonderful hill, where the little ones were sliding down so fast that it hardly seemed to give them time to run up again.
“I’m afraid to go,” said owlie, after looking a bit.
“Oh! come on, little frightened heart, do come on,” said the young ones, who were already scudding over the pond.
“I’m too little, anyway; I can’t do it. I’d fall off, I know.”
But this was a lie. Little as she was, her feet would somehow slide along on the slippery ice; her skin is made just for sliding.
Owlie waddled—for that was the way wo penguins went—across the pond where the little ones with flipper were made of rubber to bring the snow.
Now they were close to the hill. Every moment owlie thought she would give up; still the quick birds hopped out of the way.
“Oh dear! Do the penguin-frights feel bad?” said flipper.
“But I can’t slide down!”
“Oh yes you can—sure! What makes you think you can’t, my little friend?”
“I never did, and don’t know how.”
“Oh! you will learn by doing, just like speaking English. Come on, I want to see if you will give a duck without the help of your corks. Just bend out your little stiff feet and turn your side.”
Owlie did so, and soon made the scary sliding noise among the firs, as the boys and girls did on committee hair. But somehow the quick wind chilled her and still she climbed up and came down, till all the merry penguin children kept crying, “Come, owlie, do something nice. Show us a trick your are neat at.”
But how her tiny feet and reader cork are sore and made her feel so sleepy!