Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends

by Fanny Fern

One day he sat on the door-step running it over in his mind, when the old rooster, followed by his hens, marched in a procession past the door.

There was the speckled hen, black and white, (with red eyes) looking like a widow in half mourning; there was the white one that would have been pretty, hadn't she such a turn for fighting that her feathers were as scarce as brains in a dandy's head; there was the black one, that contested her claims with the white hen, to a kernel of corn, and a place in the procession next the rooster, in a manner that would have delighted the abolitionists.

Hal watched them all, and then it struck him, all of a sudden, that he had never seen a hen swim. He had seen ducks do it, and swans, and geese, but he never remembered to have seen a hen swim.

What was the reason? Didn't they know how? or wouldn't they do it?

Hal was resolved to get at the bottom of that problem without delay; so he jumped up and chased one round till he fell down and tore his jacket, and the hen flew up in a tree.

Then he tried for the speckled widow; she of course was too sharp for him.

At last he secured the brown one, and hiding her under his jacket started for the "creek," about a quarter of a mile off. He told the hen, going along, that if she didn't know how to swim, it was high time she did, and that he was going to try her any how; the hen cocked up her eye but said nothing, though she had her thoughts.

The fact was she never had been in the habit of going out of the barn-yard, without asking leave of the rooster, who was a regular old "Blue Beard;" and she knew very well that he wouldn't scratch her up another worm, for a good twelve-month, for being absent without leave. So she dug her claws into Hal's side, every now and then, and tried to peck him with her bill, but Hal told her it was no use, for go into that creek she should.

Well, he got to the creek at last, and stood triumphantly on a little bank just over it. He took a good grip of his hen, and then lifted up his arm to give her a nice toss into the water.

He told her that now she was to consider herself a duck, instead of a hen, (what a goose!) then over he went splash into the water himself. The question was not now whether the hen could swim, but whether he could; he floundered round and round, and screeched like a little bedlamite, and was just thinking of the last fib he told, when his brother Zedekiah came along and fished him out.