"You poor thing!" said Bee. "It's a shame the way people torment you."
Billy crowded past his mother, and climbed into my lap.
"Tell me a story, dear Tattah," said this born wheedler, patting my face with his little black paw.
"No, now Billy—" began Bee.
"Let him stay," I cried, casting down my pen. "It is so seldom that he cuddles that I'll sacrifice myself upon the altar of aunthood. Well, once upon a time, Billy, there was a dear little blue hen who stole away—sit still now! You've more legs than a centipede!—who stole away every day and went under the barn where it was so cool and shady, and laid a lovely little smooth, cream-coloured egg. Then when she had laid it, she was so proud that she could never help coming out and cackling at the top of her voice, 'Cut-cut-cut-ka-dah-cut!' And then the lady of the house would run out and say, 'Oh, there's that naughty little blue hen cackling over a new-laid egg which I did want so much to make an omelette, but I don't know where she has laid it. The naughty little blue hen!' So the poor lady would be obliged to use the red hen's eggs for the omelette, because the little blue hen laid hers under the barn.
"Well, after the little blue hen had laid six beautiful cream-coloured eggs, she began to sit on them day after day, covering them with her feathers, and tucking her lovely little blue wings down around the edges of her nest to keep the eggs warm, and day after day she sat and dreamed of six darling little yellow, fluffy chickens with brown wings and sparkling black eyes and dear little peepy voices, and she was so happy in thinking of her little children that she was as patient as possible, and never seemed to care that all the other hens and chickens were running about in the warm yellow sunshine and snapping up lively little shiny bugs with their yellow beaks.
"Well, after awhile, this dear little patient blue hen heard the funniest little tapping, tapping, tapping under her wings." Billy's eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he tapped the arm of the chair as I did. "And then she felt the most curious little fluttering under her wings—oh, Billy, what do you think this little blue hen felt fluttering under her wings?"
"A omelette!" said Billy, excitedly.
I finished the Jimmies as an anticlimax.
Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie at Canterbury.