THE ARTIFICIAL MOTHER.
lined with soft fur loosely tacked to the top and sides and hanging down the front in narrow strips to form a curtain. It sloped from the front to the back. The water tank was a stout earthen bottle in a saucer; a small hole near the bottom of the bottle let the water, drop by drop, into the saucer, so that as the chickens drank, the supply in the saucer was continually freshening. The bottom of the yard was covered with gravel three inches deep. This neat yard was now waiting down stairs in a sunny shed room to receive the chickens.
August went to school, and on his way home called for his grandmother to go up to the house to dinner.
Grandma knew that it was just three weeks since August had taken the last eggs, and that twenty-one days was the time allotted by nature for the bringing forth of chickens, so she shrewdly suspected what she would find; but it had not occurred to her that she would find chickens alive without the aid of a hen.
“Grandma,” asked August, as they walked along “when you set a hen on thirteen eggs, how many do you expect will hatch?”
“I hope for all,” she replied, “but I seldom get all. I think ten out of thirteen is a very good proportion.”
“My incubator beats your hens!” thought August.
When they reached the house he took her straight to the attic.
“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “So that is your secret, August! Well, I declare! And it really hatches the eggs, doesn’t it? I always knew, child, that you would invent something wonderful.”