“Robert, you are to invite no visitors without my knowledge.”
“Wull, I won’t again, then. But you hadn’t told me, er I’d forgot. An’ he showed me how to put ’em to sleep. You just take a hen er a chicken an’ put its head under its wing fer it, an’ shake it up lively—side to side, like, a keepin’ its head tight under—an’ you can stan’ ’em up in reg’lar rows. When I get a lot I’m goin’ to make ’em play soldier, that way. Soldiers asleep, though, they’d be, wouldn’t they?”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind with any of my hens an’ chickens!” exclaimed Mr. Dolloway, hotly, and picking up the basket which contained the family of fluffy little creatures he had brought for a gift, he started toward the door.
“Please, Mr. Dolloway! I’ll be good! I’ll be as good as I can be! Won’t you leave ’em?”
Mrs. Beckwith knew how one feels to have a gift returned upon one’s hands, and she quietly interposed: “Yes, Mr. Dolloway, please consider the matter for a moment. I assure you that I had no idea my boy was torturing the poor creatures committed to his charge, and I have always overlooked their feeding for myself. But, after hearing what I have just now, only one course is left to me. I now take the poultry away from Robert altogether. He will be allowed no further connection with this business; but if you can trust me with your pretty present, I will do my best to rear the chickens safely. Until a boy learns the first simple rule of ‘doing as he would be done by,’ he is unfit for any post of honor.”
“That is spoke like a lady, as I always found you, Mrs. Beckwith; an’ I think myself ’at Bobby is too young to be let have sech full swing, an’ it’ll do me proud to leave the brood to you.” Saying which, the kind, if gruff old fellow bowed profoundly to the lady, but cast a withering glance upon his worsted foe.
“Mother, Mother! do you mean it? Ain’t I no hen-keeper no more?”
“No, my dear; and it is your own fault that this is so.”
CHAPTER XIX.
ROBERT’S HAPPY GUESS.
“ONLY six weeks at The Lindens and I feel as if it had been home forever!” cried Bonny, returning from her day of service in Mr. Brook’s study. “The old life in that Second Avenue flat seems like a dream.”