She did not notice how their faces clouded over. The mere suggestion filled them with despair. Leave her beloved Rhode Island Reds, Peggy was thinking, just as Henrietta had hatched out twelve downy, fluffy balls? Why, they would be big chickens when they came back. Leave Lady Janet? was Alice’s thought. No sea-bathing and boating could make up for the loss of her friendly little face.
“Could I take Lady Janet with me, grandmother?” Alice asked.
“I hardly think so. A cat does not like to be moved.”
“It is very kind of you to think of it,” said Mrs. Owen, “but I am afraid I shall have to stay right here by my garden and my hens.”
“Oh, have you hens?” Mrs. Owen asked.
“Yes, grandmother, seven of them and a cock,” Peggy said; “and twelve teenty, tinety chickens, the dearest, cunningest things. Don’t you remember,” she added, reproachfully, “how I wrote and told you we had a birthday surprise party of hens for mother?”
“I do remember it now.”
Peggy said no more about the hens. How terrible it was to be so old that the idea of seven hens and a cock and twelve chickens made no more impression on one than that! And yet, Miss Betsy Porter must be nearly as old as her grandmother, and Miss Betsy was deeply interested in hens. After all, it was the kind of person you were, and not the age.
Two or three days later, as Mrs. Owen was writing letters, she heard Peggy say to Alice, “I like it better when grandmother isn’t here.”
“So do I,” said Alice. “I wonder when she is going home?”