Clever Duck Read Free Page A

houses and isolated farms, but now they came upon a signpost saying

    MUDDLEHAMPTON 1/2
    Â 
    And shortly after that, there was an open gateway with a sign, which read
    Â 
    MUDDLEHAMPTON CRICKET CLUB
    PRIVATE
    TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
    Â 
    But just how prosecuted they were about to be, the General and his followers were yet to realize.
    Beset by their troubled stomachs, the sows turned in at the gateway. Beyond, they could see, was a large and well-mown field with, at its far end, a single-storied wooden building in front of which a lot of people were sitting in deck chairs.
    In the middle of the field were a number of other people all dressed in white.

    As the pigs drew nearer, they could see one of these white-clad people appear to throw an object at another, who struck at it with a kind of wooden cudgel. The spectators began to clap, and there were cries of “Good shot!” and “Well hit!” while the umpire at the bowler’s end prepared to signal what looked like a certain four-pointer. But before the ball could reach the boundary, it reached the General, who fielded it
neatly in his great jaws and started thoughtfully to chew it. Meanwhile, the sows began to root about in the well-kept grass, plowing their way purposefully toward the pitch, while the shocked players stood as though turned to stone.

    All eyes were on the pigs. No one noticed a brown-and-white duck circling overhead.
    Then pandemonium broke loose as both the Muddlehampton First XI, who were fielding, and the two visiting batsmen sprang into action. The visitors led the charge, brandishing their bats, while with them ran six of the fielders, each
waving a hastily uprooted wicket pole, while the rest of the cricketers, plus the two umpires, rushed to join the fray.
    The General and his wives galloped wildly about, squealing their dismay and leaving behind them in their fright much evidence of their recent unwise feasting.
    Smack! went the bats on fat bottoms. Crack! went the stumps on broad backs, while several of the pursuing cricketers slipped and fell, adding a quite new color to their snowy flannels. Until at last the invaders were driven out, and the match abandoned.

    Muddlehampton’s scorer was a stickler for the truth, and solemnly he wrote in his scorebook, Pigs stopped play.

5
    Mr. Crook
    Damaris had not yet returned to the farm after the scene on the cricket ground. She was a fairminded bird, and as annoying as she had thought the pigs in the past, she began to feel sorry for them as they hurried off, now sore outside as well as inside. I must keep an eye on them
for as long as I can, she thought. Perhaps someone else will give them a home.
    And, shortly, someone else did.
    Among the spectators at the cricket match was a local livestock dealer called Crook, a name, some said, that suited him well, for some of his deals were a trifle shady.

    As the General and his wives retreated, squealing, before the onslaught of bat and wicket pole, Mr. Crook wasted no time but slipped behind the pavilion and out of the grounds, making his hasty way across the fields to his yard, a little distance beyond the village. Thus it was that the angry sows (for by now each blamed the General for her bellyaches and her bruises) and their defeated leader heard a familiar and most welcome sound.

    â€œPig! Pig! Pig! Pig!” crooned Mr. Crook, appearing in the lane before them, rattling a bucket, and the General and his wives eagerly followed. In through a gate they went, across a yard, and into a pen.
    As Mr. Crook closed the lower part of the stout door behind them and bolted it, he heard a quacking, and looking up, he saw a brown-and-white duck flying around.
    He thought nothing of it, for he was too busy reckoning in his head what a Large White boar and seven sows might fetch. He leaned on the half door and addressed them.
    â€œYou lot can stop here,” he said, “till the fuss
has died down, and if your owner should