HETTIE'S CHICKEN.
What can be prettier than a brood of chickens with a good motherly hen, like the one in this picture! See how the little chicks nestle and play about their mother! and see what a watchful eye she has over them! But some chickens do not have such kind mothers, as you shall hear.
There was a little black one in our yard this spring, which none of the mother-hens would own. They would peck at it, and drive it away, till it was almost starved. Aunt Jennie told our little Hettie that she might have it for her own, if she would take care of it.
So Hettie put the chicken in a cage, with some wool to cover it, and fed it several times every day, till it came to know her. When it was let out of the cage, it would follow her about wherever she went.
One night Hettie went to bed, and forgot to put her pet in its cage. What do you think it did? It just flew up on her pillow; and there it sat with its head tucked under its wing.
Hettie named it Posey, and called it her daughter.
"What will you be, some day, when Posey lays eggs, and brings out a brood of little chickens?" asked mamma one day.
That was a new idea to Hettie; and it puzzled her little brain for a minute: then she laughed out, "Shall I be their grandmother?"
Papa looked up from his paper to see what amused his little girl so much; and, when she had told him, he said he would have a pair of spectacles ready for her; and mamma said she would make her a cap; and Hettie said her little arm-chair would be very nice for a grandmother's chair.
"What will you do as you sit in your chair?" said mamma.
"Let me think," replied Hettie. "Why, my grandma is always knitting mittens and socks and hoods for us; and I must learn to knit, so I can knit some for my grandchildren."
Mamma said she would teach her, and they would begin that very day.
And now, wouldn't you like to see our little Hettie with her roguish eyes peeping over spectacles, and her sunny curls straying from her cap, and her chubby little hands knitting mittens, and all in that little arm-chair?
Aunt Amy.
