There were eleven ducklings, five for Dotty, five for Prudy, and one for Katie, the little girl with flying hair.
After they had been alive two days, Prudy thought they ought to have a bath; so she took the large iron pan which Ruth used for baking johnny-cakes, filled it with water, put the tiny creatures in, and bade them "swim," to Madam Biddy's great alarm.

They did it well, though they were as badly crowded as the five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
Katie wished the Charlie boy to see the ducklings, which were "velly difrunt from a piggie;" but dear Charlie was very ill, and when the children went with the milk, they were not allowed to see him.
I may as well give you here the history of the ducklings.
The next morning after their "swim" there were only ten left, and Dotty's lamentations could be heard all over the house.

It was Katie's odd one, she said, that was gone, the one with a black picture on his back that looked like a clover.

Next morning there were nine; and on the tenth day there was but one solitary duckling left to pipe out his sorrows all alone.

The anguish of the children was painful to be behold.
Dotty's grief affected her somewhat like the jumping toothache.