“Oh, I didn’t hear,” Peggy sprang to her feet, and went hastily through the house to the kitchen. But it was not domestic difficulties which accounted for Amy’s summons. She stood at the window, flattening her nose against the screen.
“Peggy, I wish you’d tell me what this old vixen is about. Is she trying to punish one of the chickens, or is it only a game?”
For ten days past the yellow hen had been freed from the restraints of the coop, and by day had led her brood in adventurous quest of grasshoppers, and at sunset had conducted them to the waiting nest in the rear of the woodshed. But at the present moment, a peculiar scene was being enacted. At the open door of the woodshed, a sleepy brood huddled close, awaiting the return of their mother, who with an air of determination was pursuing a squawking chick, running as if for his life.
Around the cherry-tree they circled, once, twice, thrice. Then the pursuer overtook her foster-child, and pecked him savagely. It was not a game.
The yellow hen strutted off in the direction of her peeping brood, clucking complacently, as if she congratulated herself on solving some problem satisfactorily. The poor little outcast followed with a piteous pipe, which caused the Spartan mother to turn and repeat her admonition.
For a moment Peggy was at a loss for an explanation. Then she understood. “I know,” she cried. “He’s a different breed from the others, and he’s outgrown them, and the senseless old creature thinks he doesn’t belong to her. She’s just got to be nice to him, that’s all.”
But Peggy’s efforts at discipline were unavailing. The speckled chicken surreptitiously introduced under the yellow hen’s hovering wings, enjoyed the briefest possible period of maternal protection. Before Peggy could get back into the house, the yellow hen was chasing him all around the woodshed, and Peggy found it necessary to make him comfortable for the night in a basket set behind the stove.
And this was the little drop which made her cup overflow. The forlorn peeping of the outcast chicken seemed to blend with poor Lucy’s sobs. Peggy wondered if it could be that the voice of earth’s suffering was like the hum of the insects on a summer night, so constant that one might not hear it at all, but an overwhelming chorus if one listened.
“Peggy Raymond, do you think you’re coming down with anything?” Amy demanded crossly, at half-past nine o’clock that evening. “Because you’re about as much like yourself as chalk is like cheese.”
Peggy stood up.