Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus

by Laura Lee Hope

"What?"

"We can give the hen mamma a ride on our boat. Poor thing! She never can go paddling or swimming with her family. Let's take her on our boat, and she can sail with her little ducks then, and not get wet."

"That's what we'll do!" Bunny cried. "I'm glad you thought of it, Sue. We'll give the old hen a sail, and the ducks can paddle around with us."

Bunny steered the raft over to the shore where the hen was clucking away, calling to her ducklings to come to dry land. Perhaps she thought they had been in bathing long enough.

"Can we catch her?" asked Sue. "You know it's hard work to catch a chicken. You couldn't catch the old rooster."

"Oh, this is easier," Bunny said. "The hen mother won't run away from her little ducks."

And, for a wonder, Bunny was right. But then, as Grandma Brown told him afterward, the old hen was a very tame one, and was used to being picked up and petted.

So when Bunny and Sue reached the shore the hen did not run away. She let Bunny pick her up, and she only clucked a little when he set her down in a dry place on the door raft.

"Now we'll go sailing again," Bunny said, as he pushed off from the shore.

The old hen clucked and fluttered her wings. She was calling to her little ducks. And they came right up on to the raft, too. Perhaps they wanted to see what sailing was like, and then, too, they may have had enough of swimming and paddling for a time. At any rate, there the old mother hen and her little ducks were on the raft, with the two children.