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Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Duckling in the Dog Bed
On a green hillside, where the wind smelled like clover and rain, there sat a little stone farmhouse with a red door. Behind the farmhouse was a barn, and behind the barn were rolling fields full of woolly sheep. This was Clover Hill Farm, and it belonged to a farmer named Josie Turpin.
Josie had strong hands, muddy boots, and a whistle that could carry all the way across the valley. She had a tractor that coughed black smoke, a cat named Pepper who slept on the windowsill, and a mother sheepdog named Nell.
Nell was the best sheepdog in three counties. She was black and white with one brown ear, and she could move a hundred sheep through a gate with just a look. Nell lived in a warm corner of the barn, on a bed of old blankets, and one spring morning she had four puppies.
They were fat and wriggly. There was Patch, who had a brown spot over one eye. There was Bramble, who was the biggest. There was Clover, who was the smallest. And there was Twig, who sneezed a lot.
But there was also someone else.
On the very same morning the puppies were born, Josie found a single egg sitting in the grass near the pond. It was pale green and all alone. There was no mother duck anywhere to be seen.
"Oh dear," said Josie. She picked up the egg carefully. It was still warm. She looked around, but the pond was empty and the sky was clear. No duck was coming back for it.
So Josie tucked the egg into Nell's blankets, right beside the puppies.
"Keep this one warm too, would you, Nell?" she said.
Nell sniffed the egg. She sniffed it again. Then she curled her tail around it, just like she did with her puppies.
Two days later, the egg cracked open, and out tumbled a fuzzy yellow duckling.
Nell licked him clean, just as she had licked her puppies. The duckling looked up at Nell's big brown eyes and peeped. Nell looked down at the duckling's flat orange beak and wagged her tail.
Josie named him Wobble, because he wobbled when he walked.
From that very first day, Wobble thought he was a dog.
He slept in the dog bed. He tumbled with the puppies. When Patch chewed on a stick, Wobble chewed on a stick. When Bramble chased his tail, Wobble chased his tail — though he fell over more. When the puppies yipped, Wobble tried to yip too, but what came out was a loud, cheerful QUACK.
Nobody seemed to mind. Nell treated him exactly the same as the others. She nudged him when he wandered too far. She let him sleep tucked under her chin. As far as Wobble knew, he had one mother, four brothers and sisters, and a very odd-shaped nose.
