'We don't know anyone as ugly as you.' The ugly duckling did not lose heart, however, and kept on questioning. He stopped at a pond and began to ask all the other birds, 'do you know of any ducklings with gray feathers like mine?' But everyone shook their heads in scorn. Then one day, at sunrise, he ran away from the farmyard. 'Nobody loves me, they all tease me! Why am I different from my brothers?' 'Why are you so different from the others?' And the ugly duckling felt worse than ever. 'Poor little ugly duckling!' she would say. He felt sad and lonely, while Mother Duck did her best to console him.

His brothers didn't want to play with him, he was so clumsy, and all the farmyard folks simply laughed at him. As the days went by, the poor ugly duckling became more and more unhappy. Well, the gray duckling certainly wasn't pretty, and since he ate far more than his brothers, he was outgrowing them. 'I can't understand how this ugly duckling can be one of mine!' she said to herself, shaking her head as she looked at her last born. The ducklings grew quickly, but Mother Duck worried secretly.

An ugly duckling who had gray feathers stared at his mother. But before she had time to think about it, the last egg finally hatched. 'Did I count the eggs wrongly?' Mother Duck wondered. How did it get there? TOCK! TOCK! The little prisoner was pecking inside his shell. Mother Duck couldn't remember when she laid that seventh egg. But one egg was bigger than the rest, and it didn't hatch. One nice morning, the eggs hatched and out popped six chirpy ducklings. Once upon a time, a duck family lived in a farm, and Mother Duck had been sitting on seven eggs.

Jobb oversetter