It was on a rainy, drizzly morning, just after breakfast, that a little yellow duckling wandered out of a house and down to the pond. This little duckling’s name was Danny, and he was a very good-natured young fellow, who could do everything nicely—dip his head in the water, catch a fly on his long bill, and keep himself in order generally. But this rainy, drizzly weather made him feel rather sad.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” quacked Danny to himself, as he sat on the bank by the pond. “It’s not at all a nice day.”
Danny began to think over all the things that he could do with his friends, and how merry they all were on happy days.
“We splash,” he thought; “we swim, and we splash, and we dive under the water, and—oh dear! it is very dull, I declare, to sit here alone. I do wish it were pleasant weather.”
Up the bank, out of the house, came his friend, Tommy Tiptoe, the little boy who owned Danny. He carried a red um brella in his hand and walked about in large boots. By the side of him hopped Lollipop, and Fluff and Kink were close by; indeed, all Tommy’s pets came frolicking down to the pond, for Tommy did not mean to stay in, even though it rained. But Tommy looked very grave.
“My red umbrella is all the company I have in the world,” said he; and this worried Danny.
The rain splashed on the ground and pitter-pattered about Danny’s feet; but he was so glad to see Tommy and the others that he waddled as fast as he could over the grass and up to the house; and as soon as he got there, it seemed a great deal nicer at once.
“Quack! quack!” quacked Danny, slipping under Tommy’s umbrella and taking his place close beside the red top.
“Here is Danny!” said Tommy, looking delighted; but Danny looked up into his face with an earnest gentle look, as if he said, “Do just show me how I can play about in this rainy weather, will you, and I’ll be a good duckling.”
Now, Tommy placed the umbrella on the ground with the top sloped down a good way, so that it came still nearer to Danny. He then sat down on the top of the umbrella, putting one little boot on Lollipop’s back.
“Now we’re not at all crowded under the red umbrella,” said Tommy; “and if you four dear pets will sit quietly in front, here is room for me to rest my dear blue eye against the slanting top.”
So he quietly took off his boot from Lollipop’s back and laid it gently on the ground, which nearly crushed a lovely little Daisy that was growing at the bottom of the flower border, near the gooseberry bush.
“Now, you dear good Danny, sit quiet,” said Tommy; and Danny sat quiet, and everybody sat quiet.
But crowding all together really brought Tommy’s little pets more inside the umbrella, especially as it was sloping downwards. The rain dripped on the top; the top sloped down to the middle, and all in the middle was in fact very damp; but it was very nice after all to see all his little animals close together. So Tommy caught hold of the tip-top of the umbrella and went to sleep, and they all went to sleep.
After while Danny found it very hot inside the umbrella, and also saw a good many drops of water beginning to trickle rather uncomfortably down the top where it was so sloping, so he quietly waddled out.
Although the rain was still falling, yet, as soon as he glanced round, all was so cheerful and pleasant outside, that he could not help waddling from side to side, and giving a gentle splash of his feet in the puddles, and another one just by the doorstep, where very many puddles lay.
And then he opened his mouth to his bright, gay friends, who were twinkling and trembling on the bough in their white jackets, and even let in at mouth a good deal of shining water.
“ do sing, do sing, if you please,” quacked Danny, looking up at them once more. But all they did was this—straining so slightly as they did; but while they were quite happy—quacking or singing, or hopping or walking; and Danny hopped about, first one way, and then another.
“It will perhaps all soon be quite dry; I do wish you would sing again, and good little Tommy again awake, and come out to the fine dry weather,” said Danny, squeezing into a square inch of room near the door-mat, which, as you can fancy, was almost pattering all over with water-drops, and floody all around but nice and dry to his feet.
So wealthy, and that too all day long—still it is no doubt sometimes rather threatening, with an uncertainty—this caused Danny as he thought it over—to shake his grey down feathers so whenever he happened to look up at the blue sky.
“Oh dear!” said he, a little sadly, “if it would but lose one of its many long tongues of rain and wait a little; if he would but drink up one or two steps, or puff off out of his hazy eye such a quantity of moistened air, which seems to hang over the whole house; indeed, if it would but seem just a little inclined towards it again; but, I don’t know how I shall manage; it will never do, I shall at any rate very soon get wet through from the inside, I am sure.”
And thus Danny sat gloomy and quite dismal all alone, or, as when nobody danced or left off tumbling that it could ever be underneath Tommy’s red umbrella, which was very dull and very heavy on the grass: but, “I’ll go and see too,” thought Danny, so down he waddled without delay to the apple-tree.
“Haven’t you seen him?” quacked Danny.
“Yes, truly,” said the hen, “he told us something very particular yesterday.”
“Have you such a fine little golden spout; which you give, as they do, with flowing round the smooth red apples, domain and all heirlooms; indeed, and that too, into all your words;” and this he accompanied by no motion of his head, but only such a smiling look; that of reading surely seemed as if he altogether were a favourite customer. In the branches she skipped, full of delight, and made the finest talloid in the hands of all who wished to take the golden spout.
So everybody now went to sleep again under the wet garb, so full of conversation as the dictionary is, and, to amuse everyone with all he could, Danny practised too, as well as he could, the fausness step, which Danny’s father could, while with his wife, make the company quite wild.
“Quack!” said he, said he, accordingly. “Then I shall be like poor dear Danny, and as good a friend; who is a poor dear fellow,” but he really had nothing to do, except standing by a warm fire and in his grey paletot, till, hot and hotter, he looked up anxiously and to tell them all he saw a forking motion from a stratum of moist vapour, like the tail of a comet.
“Wink, your eye, please,” said Danny’s kind farmer grandfather, with his silvery beard.
And right on this account Tommy got up varying about every now and then with little quacks of delight, in order just to look up the sky, and, instead of their singing or quacking, so all the wet birds dashed past the little animals standing by foot stunted: so that out of the blue and the grey and the and into the air got their refreshment, comets up in and the four breezes, both, six together, and looking so bright and heavenly, yes so heavenly, that Danny had no time to go in; but just looking wistfully after each one of them started forth so mechanically to look for a bit of water or of earth.
And—but who knows how it may happen, with everything, or that that this may be THE RAIN-DAY ADVENTURE, that is, of which every day of one’s entire life ought to appear to one to be a THE RAINY-DAY ADVENTURE.