A REAL POND. 93

“We must run, Mousie,” said father, “‘or we shall get a
ducking.”

“What is a ducking?”

“What the ducks get, I suppose, when they go head over
heels into the water. Look at them all coming, waddling down
to the brink! They think that the rain will stir up all the
worms and leeches—all ready for them to gobble up. Come,
come, we shall be soaked through,” and father took his little
girls hand. They ran as quickly as they could to get to the
house; but as they were on the way, father opened the door of
the nearest greenhouse and let Mousie run in.

“T have something to do here,” he said, and taking a
trowel, he filled a good-sized: flower-pot with earth; then going
to a corner of the house, where a row of large bell-shaped
glasses, with knobs to hold them by, had been put to cover up
some seeds, he took up one of them, and turning it upside
down, fixed the knob firmly into the pot of earth, so that the
glass stood steady and upright

Mousie had not been watching, for she was looking. out
and longing for the rain to stop, while she said to herself, sadly,
“The worst of ponds is that they are out of doors.”

‘Well, we will see if we can’t bring one in,” said father.
‘Look here, Mousie. Now I am going to carry this glass and
pot upstairs to the nursery window, then we will see what is to
be done next.”

As he was speaking, father was busily filling in the crack
which was left between the edge of the flower-pot and the sides
of the glass with some bright green moss and little ferns.
These drooped prettily down over the pot, almost hiding it.
Then he began to carry it carefully.

/ Yow cam-come jwith:ime,\or stay here,’ said he. And
Mousie chose to come. Father set the pot, glass, and all in