“Yes,” said Beechnut, “she is setting, I have no doubt; and as she has been missing a long time, I presume the chickens are about coming out.”
“Hark!” said Beechnut.
The boys listened, and they heard a faint peeping sound under the hen.
Beechnut looked toward the boys and smiled.
Phonny was in an ecstacy of delight. Stuyvesant was much more quiet, but he seemed equally pleased. Beechnut said that he thought that they had better go away and leave the hen to herself, and that probably she would come off the nest, with her brood, that evening or the next morning.
“But stop,” said Beechnut, as he was going down the ladder. “It is important to ascertain whether they are eggs or chickens under the hen. For if they are eggs they are one third your property, and if they are chickens, they are all mine.”
“However,” he resumed, after a moment’s pause, “I think we will call them eggs to-day. I presume they were all eggs when we made the bargain. To-morrow we will get them all down, and you, Phonny, may make a pretty little coop for them in some sunny corner in the yard.”
Phonny had by this time become so much interested in the poultry, that he proposed to Stuyvesant to let him have half the care of them, and offered to give Stuyvesant half of his squirrel in return. Stuyvesant said that he did not care about the squirrel, but that he would give him a share of the hen-house contract for half the shop.
Phonny gladly agreed to this, and so the boys determined that the first thing for the next day should be, to put the shop and the tools all in complete order, and the next, to make the prettiest hen-coop they could contrive, in a corner of the yard. This they did, and Beechnut got the hen and the chickens down and put them into it. The brood was very large, there being twelve chickens in it, and they were all very pretty chickens indeed.