Just then there was an awful cackle and clatter out in the kitchen. The beef-bone fight concluded, every scrap of a mouthful being gobbled up, the hens had come tumbling in over the sill all together to see what could be found, now that Grandma was sick in bed and couldn’t drive them out.
Davie told Grandma this. He had to say it over several times, his mouth under her cap-frill.
“My sakes!” she exclaimed, “you take th’ broom an’ shoo ’em out o’ the kitchen, Davie, an’ shet th’ door tight after ’em.”
So Davie slipped down from the bed, glad enough to have something to do.
“My mother told me—” began Peletiah.
“An’ you go with him an’ help drive out them pesky hens,” cried Grandma, rolling over in bed to look at him. “An’ I’m well enough, so you needn’t come again, you tell your Ma.”
Peletiah never waited to hear more than the last sentence that told him what he had come to find out. He got off from his chair in great satisfaction and went out into the little kitchen where Davie was waving the broom over the wild fluttering tangle of hens, all squawking together, as he tried to drive them out of doors.
“O dear! one’s running into the bedroom. Keep her out, Peletiah—hurry!” cried Davie in great distress.
But Peletiah, never having hurried in his life, couldn’t understand why he should do so now. So the hen had plenty of time to run around him and fluffed and squawked her way into the bedroom, where she ducked under Grandma’s big four-poster.
“She’s gone under Grandma’s bed,” announced Peletiah, coming up to where Davie, leaning under the big table, had seized one hen by the leg, and was wildly trying to catch another. At last he had her,—but she turned and gave him a vicious little peck on his hand as he backed out holding on for dear life to them both.