Anytime Tales by Enid Blyton Page A

were making!
    “I shall be quite sorry when the rain stops,” said the little doll. She had bought herself a mackintosh and sou’wester, and also a pair of Wellington boots. So she was quite all right. Everyone looked out for the little couple each morning now, and called to them from the top windows.
    One day, when the doll and duck were floating past the police station on their way to the shops, a window was flung open, and the toy policeman called to them.
    “Hey!” he said. “Come here!”
    “Oh dear! Do you suppose he wants to turn me out now?” said the poor duck, trembling so much that the doll was nearly shaken off his back. “I shan’t go to him. I shall just pretend I don’t see him.”
    “Oh, we’d better go,” said the doll. “It isn’t good to be cowardly. Let’s be brave and go.”
    So they floated across to him. To their great surprise he beamed at them, and said: “Well, you certainly have made yourselves useful, you two! Now look, here is my shopping list. Will you do my shopping for me too? I cannot get out of the police station.”
    So they went to do the policeman’s shopping as well, and weren’t they pleased to put sixpence into their bag!
    In three weeks’ time the rain stopped and the floods began to go down. Little by little all the water
    drained away, and people were able to go in and out of the doors of their houses. The field round the farmhouse dried up and the little pond was itself again. The farmer came to the gate and called to the doll.
    “What about coming back to be my gardener again?” he shouted. “The duck can have the use of my pond, if he wishes!”
    “Oh dear!” groaned the duck. “What a dull life that will be, after this exciting three weeks!”
    “Don’t worry, duck,” said the doll, hugging him hard round the neck. “I’ve got such a lovely idea!”
    The duck was on the river, and the doll stepped off and ran to the farmer. “I’m sorry I can’t come back,” she said, “but I’ve bought a little house by the river, and I and the duck are going to live there, and do all the fetching and carrying for the folk who live on the riverside!”
    The duck nearly fell over on the water when he heard this. Live with the doll in a little house—and work for her! Oh, could anything be better!
    It was quite true. The doll had spent her sixpences well. She swam off with the duck and took him to a tiny house on the riverside. It had curtains at the windows, and a tiny landing-stage.
    “There you are!” she said. “That’s our house! And all the folk who live nearby have promised that they will call you whenever they want to be taken from one side of the river to the other, duck—and if they want any shopping done, we can go and get their shopping lists, and you can float with me down the river, till we come to the town. Then I shall jump
    off and do the shopping, and you can wait for me. I’ll come back and put the parcels on your back, and off we’ll go up the river once more. Isn’t that lovely!”
    So that’s what they do now. And in the evening, when the work is done, the doll carries the duck into her little house, and they sit on chairs opposite one another and drink hot cocoa together.
    Ah, they have a fine life together! But they did work hard for it, didn’t they?