It occurred to her, in the midst of her worry, that perhaps Sassy wanted to set. Accordingly she got ten eggs together, arranged them in a nest, caught the hen, and put her upon them. But here a new and unlooked-for thing happened. Sassy would not stay on the nest. Not at all daunted, the little girl procured a broad strip of calico and tied the hen down. But in her struggles to get free, Sassy broke nearly all of the eggs under her, and finally hied herself out of the new coop and over the smoke-house to liberty.
Unhappy that her leghorn thus spurned to mother a brood, the little girl sought the biggest brother. "Oh, no wonder the mean thing crows," she said to him, as she told her story.
The biggest brother conferred long and solemnly on the question. When it was settled, the little girl came out of the sitting-room with a look of hopeful determination upon her face and hunted up Sassy. The latter had grown so bold since the Thanksgiving before that any one could pick her up without running after her. So the little girl, in two winks, had her under one arm and was on her way to the carnelian bluff.
It was a hot, sultry day in midsummer, and not a breath of wind was blowing over the farm. The grain-fields were still. The blades of the corn drooped limply. The creamy sap of the milkweed growing in the timothy meadow was drying up in the stem. Below the bluff the herd stood, belly deep, lashing about them with wet tails, and the pigs wallowed among the wilting bulrushes in damp security.
Yet, with all its heat and quiet, the afternoon was destined to be a stormy one. The swallows were flying low across the farm-yard; the colts, pestered by busy flies, were moving restlessly about the wire pen; the Maltese cat was trying her claws on a table leg in the kitchen; and, behind the wind-break, a collie had given over a beef-bone and was industriously eating grass. But all these signs, which should have foretold to her what was coming, were unnoticed by the little girl as she hurried along.
At the southern base of the bluff she halted and put Sassy on the ground with her head pointing up the hill. Then, with apron held wide, she began to shoo the hen gently toward the summit. For the biggest brother had said very emphatically that the only way to make a chicken lay is to drive her up a hill.
Sassy did not pay any attention to the apron, but shook her wattles crossly, "k-r-r-red," and held her head so that one white ear lobe lay questioningly uppermost.
"Now you go up," commanded the little girl; "go right straight up, or I'll just give it to you. I'll make you lay, you lazy thing!"
Sassy tilted her head so that the opposite ear lobe showed, and lifted one foot against her breast. Otherwise she did not indicate that she had even heard her orders. Her disobedience angered the little girl.
"Shoo! shoo! shoo!" she cried; "do you think I'm going to carry you? No, siree! You'll walk,—every step of it, too. I'll teach you." She seized Sassy by the tail and rudely shoved her forward.