And Mrs. Wood would apologize, and hasten forth to drive the fowls from their unlawful picnic grounds. But she would scarcely have returned to the sitting-room before there would be a thundering knock at the back door, and she would hear Biddy’s voice raised in irate argument with the woman across the alley. “You just tell your missus, if she don’t keep them chickens out of my cabbages, I’ll wring their necks!”
Then the poor “missus” would have to run out in the hot sun again, and jump cabbages until her unruly brood had been persuaded to return.
“I couldn’t take but three cabbages in one leap at first,” she told Franklin; “but now,” she added proudly, “I can do five!”
She knew that her son admired an athletic woman, and talked a great deal among the boys about having the only mother who could drive a nail straight. But when Franklin spoke of wanting a boat at the lake that summer, she said that he could not possibly afford to have one unless he sold his chickens.
“But, Mother, I’m not going to buy the whole boat! Our share will only come to about thirteen dollars.”
“I don’t think we ought to afford even half a boat, unless you sell the chickens. Nobody loves them anyhow. It isn’t as if they were ‛real folks,’ like the cats.”
Franklin thought it over, and decided that, as he made no money from his hens, it might be as well to get rid of them. It was true, also, as his mother said, that nobody had loved them. But then they were not in the least demonstrative themselves, and did not seem to require affection. Indeed, their reserve amounted almost to coldness when any advances were made. And in addition to this, they had once caused Franklin to appear quite foolish in school.
He had kept a little diary of their doings, labelled “Plymouth Rock Record,” and one day it happened to be on his desk when the principal came by. She picked it up with much pride, thinking that here was a boy who really loved his United States History, and, turning to the first entry, read: “Priscilla laid a hard-boiled egg to-day.”
Franklin wondered why it was that she left the room so suddenly, but suspected afterwards that she had been laughing at him.
“There’s something silly about hens,” he thought. “No matter what they do, if you own them, you get drawn into it.”