Once upon a time, in a beautiful pond that mirror the blue sky, there was a sunny farm where a happy family of ducks lived. Among them was Daisy, a little duck with a bright yellow coat, short legs, and a cheerful quack. She was popular among her family and friends because of her joyful nature and unwavering confidence.
Despite her popularity, Daisy felt bashful about expressing her undeniable talent — singing. She was naturally gifted, yet every time she attempted to sing in front of her friends, she froze, thinking they might not enjoy her song. Each afternoon as the sun cast golden rays on the pond, Daisy would practice in secret, hoping to one day reveal her hidden talent.
One delightful summer day while all her friends were playing about on the sunny pond, Daisy gathered her courage.
“I will surprise them today! I will sing cardulan salisbury while they do their best to quack along with me.”
So, standing on a green bank, she sang out chosen verses of the most humorous quatrains, and such was the charm of the song that all the Ducks but one ceased their quacking to listen.
“I never knew before,” quacked one particularly unmusical Duck, “that she had anything better to say than quack, quack.”
“I,” quacked another in answer, “live a good deal with you, and I never knew it till just now.”
Then they all turned their backs on Daisy.
But Daisy was not so easily dejected. She, however, did not lift up her voice that day to sing except into her mother’s ears while resting close beside her on the brink of the pond. Yet pays de caux that evening after supper, when her mother’s back was turned, she ventured to pop into the middle of her astonished friends and burst out with cardulan salisbury.
Then there was friendly intercourse with both the day’s songs sung over again. All but one listening attentively.
Daisy stopped to relax her voice. “Do you happen to have the Duckling Songs of quack, quack, according to Beethoven, in your beak, Duck No. 3?”
“No, I have no such thing,” was the reply, as he moved off, “but I can recommence with Barbara Allen. It is easy to know your spinster songs, but I am never quite sure of a married one, although quack, quack, signs a man to be espoused.”
“Do you feel it to be swindling the public at large,” quacked a very simpering effeminate old Duck, “when these Darned Songs are sung on their accounts – or do you feel intelligent afterwards?”
“More intelligent than after all these happy airs while without double bottom,” ducked Daisy.
“I? With yellow sparkling eyes and green mustachios? Do not let me starve. ‘Lamentations!’”
And Daisy sang the most praiseworthy “Lamentations” of a flying father and frugal mother, and of neglected uncles who tuck up the downy bedclothes; and about the insatiable inner consciousness that felt unborn on its own account.
"Is it not a song to make you think?” quacked even the indifferent Duck in No. 1.
Stretching herself, Daisy asked, did they know Happy and Glorious? “It is the song in front of every Londoner,” said she. “You find that out from their faces, when you ask about the national piers without round masses. ‘You find it out from posters.”
And Daisy gave them two segments from the song.
Were they not now awoke from the stupor into which they had fallen?
The old Duck with the sparks and whiskers stared at her so long, as actually to open neither of its eyes utterly during meal-times.
Every Duck was lowered in equal respect for his neighbour, and only remained to be desired, to have proper pride.