"Don't take Jehoshaphat, will you, Captain Swift? I've fed him about every day this year, and he eats out o' my hand just as cute's the next one."
"Don't take Speckletop, will you, Grandfather?" Elizabeth moaned.
"She's a setting hen. I don't calculate to eat no chicken pie made out o' setting hens."
"It's dretful hard to eat your own hens," Grandmother said. "You raise 'em from chickens, and you get to know every one from every t'other one, and then some fine morning Father he puts their heads on the chopping block, and that's the last of them, but they do stick, going down, when I try to eat them."
"You don't have to worry, Mother. I know this is a pretty middling tender-hearted family, so I bought this pair o' roosters over to Battletown."
"Where's Battletown?" Elizabeth asked.
"That's the old-fashioned name for the region over yonder. This here was called Crocker Neck. You remind me and I'll tell you some poetry about it."
"I hate to eat anybody else's hens," Grandmother said, "you don't know how they been raised."
"They say old Uncle Jonathan Swift won't take his vittles hot nor cold," Grandfather chuckled. "Either way they hurt his teeth, he says."
"If you feel too squeamish about seeing those chickens picked, you just tell Grandfather, Elizabeth," her grandmother said after he had left the table. "I used to feel pretty delicate about such things myself, till I decided I'd got to get hardened."