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sounded like “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
    â€œI know one thing, duck,” she said. “I like you, so I do. Good luck to you.”
    â€œThanks,” said Damaris, “and I hope all your troubles will be little ones.”
    Which they were, because before long, all the sows farrowed.

    Most had eight, nine, or ten piglets, but Mrs. O’Bese, just to be different, gave birth to no less than thirteen little babies.
    â€œLet us only hope,”she said, “hat they don’t grow up to be as longwinded as their dad, or it will be an unlucky number.”

    â€œI like that sow,″ said Damaris to Rory. They were having one of their evening conversations out in the orchard, Rory lying in the grass, Damaris squatting beside him.

    â€œShe’s the best of a bad lot,” said Rory, “but none of them has changed, really They still patronize all the other animals on the farm. They still think they’re the greatest and they don’t hide it.”
    â€œLook at those two, Emma,” said the farmer to his wife, as side by side they leaned against the orchard gate, enjoying the end of the day.
    â€œIt’s the strangest friendship, Jim,” she said.
    â€œThat’s the strangest duck,” he said. “I’ve said it many times before, I know, but she saved us a packet of money. We’d never have seen our pigs again, and that dealer would have been laughing. She found them, all by herself.”
    â€œAnd could have lost her life.”
    â€œYes. Why should a duck worry about pigs? She goes visiting them, you know. I saw her
today, quacking away to that old sow and the sow grunting back at her. Look at her now, bending Rory’s ear about something or other. I’d dearly love to understand what animals say to one another.”

    â€œLook at the farmer and his wife chatting away, Rory,”Damaris said. “I’d dearly love to understand what humans say to one another.”
    â€œThat,” said Rory, “is one thing you’re never going to be able to do. I can understand the odd word—‘Come, boy!’ ‘Away to me!’‘Down!’ ‘Stay!’—that sort of thing. But most of what they say is gibberish.”
    He got up and moved toward the two people, Damaris waddling behind.
    â€œListen,” he said. “They’ll say something when we reach them,” and when they did, the man patted him and said a couple of words.

    â€œI got that,” Rory said. “He’s telling me I’m a good dog.”
    The woman bent down and stroked Damaris’s brown-and-white plumage, and she, too, spoke two words.
    â€œWhat did she say to me?” asked Damaris.
    â€œHaven’t a clue,” replied Rory, as the farmer’s wife said once more, “Clever duck!”

ALSO BY Dick King-Smith AND Nick Bruel
    Visit a wonderfully silly nonsense world and the very unusual creatures that live there. You’ll meet Wollycobble, Tumblerum, Og, and Ut as they set up house under the mishmash trees.
    When a bad-tempered camel escapes from the zoo, he leaves a trail of havoc across the English countryside.
    An adventurous family of mice strikes out in search of a new home and finds a completely different kind of life.
    When a rampaging tyrannosaurus rex threatens the Great Plain, a pterodactyl and apatosaurus combine their unique skills to take him on in this hilarious adventure.

Text copyright © 1996 by Foxbusters Ltd.
    Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Nick Bruel
    Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings
Limited Partnership
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
    All rights reserved
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    First published in Great Britain by Puffin Books, an imprint of the Penguin Group
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    Book design by Jaime Putorti
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    eISBN 9781429925136
    First eBook Edition : May 2011
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    Library of Congress