How to make friends:
Step 1: Introduce yourself. Be friendly! Don't forget to smile!
Step 2: Ask them about themselves. This makes you sound really interested! Make sure you really listen to their answers!
Step 3: Pay your new friend a compliment. Nobody can resist a good compliment.
Webby stared at the book for the hundredth time. It made it sound so easy to make friends. Webby was sure she could do it if she had the chance.
But that was the problem. She never had the chance.
Grammy never let her leave the Manor without her, and as Mr. McDuck's live-in housekeeper, Grammy just about never left. And when she did leave, each outing was prefaced with the review of a long list of rules, emphasis on "stay by my side" and "don't talk to strangers." But if Webby couldn't talk to strangers, how would she make friends?
"Strangers can be dangerous, dear. I don't want you to get hurt."
"But-"
"Come along, Webby, let's go."
A conversation that would repeat itself every time they went out until Webby turned eight and gave up.
Things got a little better a few months later when Grammy took her to the Money Bin. The "don't talk to strangers" rule was relaxed quite a bit-it turned out that most of the people who worked at the Money Bin weren't strangers at all. Sure, these people weren't exactly her age, but that didn't mean she couldn't put Making Friends Plan A (and Plans B and C, if necessary) into effect.
It wasn't long before everyone at the Money Bin knew her name. Of course, some were much happier to see her than others.
"Hi, I'm Webby! Do you work here? I like your shoes!"
The duck working at the desk looked down at her feet in surprise. "I'm not wearing shoes, but thanks?" she said.
Webby hardly noticed her response as she bounded over to the next desk. "Hi, I'm Webby! Do you work here? Ooooh, I like your pen!" Webby took it off the desk and drew a flower on her hand before continuing on to the next desk.
"Hi, I'm Webby! Ooooh, what's that? Can I try it?" Forgetting the second part of step 2, Webby climbed onto the desk and started pushing buttons on the adding machine. "Hey, this is fun!"
A pair of arms took hold of her and carried her to the doorway.
"Hi, I'm Webby! Do you work here? Where are we going? Is this like a ride? Ooh, or some sort of adventure? Do you want to be my-oof!" The arms dumped her outside the accounting room and slammed the door shut behind her.
Not to be deterred, Webby continued on. The next door she came across was labeled with a few really big words that she didn't bother to take the time to read.
"Hi, I'm Webby! Do you work here? I like your hat!" she said to a tall chicken tinkering with some metal.
"Hmph," the chicken said, turning away.
Webby moved around to his other side. "Whatcha makin'? It looks really cool!"
"I don't have time for children," he said.
"That's ok. I'm not really a child. I'm Webby!" the duckling introduced herself again.
"Right," said the chicken, turning back the other way.
Webby followed again. "What's it going to do?" she asked.
"It's a security robot prototype," he said.
"What's that mean?" asked Webby.
"It means it's going to protect Mr. McDuck's Money Bin," he said.
"That little thing? That's so cool! What does it do? Does it shoot lasers? Oh, oh, does it have a rocket launcher?"
Gyro Gearloose looked at the duckling before him and blinked. No one had ever been so interested in his inventions before. Mr. McDuck's board all thought it was a waste of time, Mr. McDuck himself was indulgent at best, his father and grandfather had always been too busy with their own inventions and repairs to give him much attention, and his mother didn't know the first thing about mechanics, so her praise was always superficial (that is, when she wasn't yelling at him for inadvertently destroying the kitchen. Again).
A smile slowly grew on Gyro's face as he started to explain, piece by piece, the prototype he was building (starting with what a prototype was). The duckling (Webby, wasn't it?) listened to him with rapt attention, asking all the right questions and even giving him some well-intentioned-but-childish-and-unusable (wait a second, maybe he could do that…) suggestions.
And that was about the biggest compliment Gyro had ever been given.