ZHE UGLY DUCKLING. 136

loud cry as 1rightened itself. Oh! it could not forget those beau.
tiful, happy birds; and so soon as it could see them no longer, it
dived down to the very bottom, and when it came up again, it
was quite beside itself. It knew not the name of those birds, and
knew not whither they were flying; but it loved them more than
it had ever loved any one. It was notat all envious of them. How
could it think of wishing to possess such loveliness as they had}
It would have been glad if only the ducks would have endured
its company—the poor ugly creature!

And the winter grew cold, very cold! The Duckling was
forced to swim about in the water, to prevent the surface from
freezing entirely ; but every night the hole in which it swam about
became smallerand smaller. It froze so hard that the icy cover-
ing crackled again ; and the Duckling was obliged to use its legs
continually to prevent the hole from freezing up. At last it became
exhausted, and lay quite still, and thus froze fast into the ice.

Early ‘in the morning a peasant came by, and when he saw
what had happened, he took his wooden shoe, broke the ice-crust
to pieces, and carried the Duckling home to his wife. Then it
came to itself again. The children wanted to play with it; but
the Duckling thought they would do it an injury, and in its terror
fluttered up into the milk-pan, so that the milk spurted down into
the room. The woman clasped her hands, at which the Duckling
flew down into the butter-tub, and then into the meal-barrel and
out again. How it looked then! The woman screamed, and
struck at it with the fire-tongs; the children tumbled over one
another, in their efforts to catch the Duckling; and they laughed
and screamed finely! Happily the door stood open, and the poor
creature was able to slip out between the shrubs into the newly-
fallen snow; and there it lay quite exhausted. d

But it would be too melancholy if I were to tell all the misery
and care which the Duckling had to endure in the hard winter.
It lay out on the moor among the reeds, when the sun began to
shine again and the larks to sing; it was a beautiful spring.

Then all at once the Duckling could flap its wings: they beat
the air more strongly than before, and bore it strongly away ; and
before it well knew how all this had happened, it found itself ina
great garden, where the elder trees smelt sweet, and bent their
long green branches down to the canal that wound through the
region. Oh, here it was so beautiful, such a gladness of spring!
and from the thicket came three glorious white swans; they
rustled their wings, and swam lightly on the water. The Duckling
knew the splendid creatures, and felt oppressed by a peculiar
sadness, a

“Twill fly away to them, to the royal birds! and they will kill
me, because I, that am:so ugly, dare to approach them. But it
is of no consequence! Better to be killed by ‘em than to be
pursued by ducks, and beaten by fowls, and pushed about by the