[XVI.]
POLLY PEPPER’S CHICKEN-PIE.
“Yes, indeed, Jasper,” cried Polly; “I’ll tell about the chicken-pie I made; only ’twasn’t a chicken-pie at all,” and she broke off into a merry laugh.
“Hold on,” cried Ben, “you’ll spoil it all, Polly. Tell the story first, that’s best.”
“So I will,” said Polly. “Well, in the first place, none of us in The Little Brown House ever knew where it came from, to begin with. Ben found it one day in a swamp down by the meadow, as he was digging sweet-flag to sell, to get some money to buy a pair of boots for the winter. It wasn’t hurt in the least, only it was so small it couldn’t get out. The wonder is, how it ever got there at all; however, Ben didn’t care for that, so long as he could get Master Chick in his possession. So he took an old fence-rail; and by dint of poking and urging the chicken, which didn’t want to come, and by floundering and tumbling round in the bog till he was pretty wet himself, at last he caught it.
“Oh! you must know it was a fine black chicken,—a Shanghai; and [Ben grasped it, oh, so tightly! under one arm, and he flew home], and bursting into the door, he scared us, and he most upset me,—I was helping Mamsie to pull out the basting-threads of the coat she had just finished. And, goodness me, how that chicken did scream!”
[Ben grasped it tightly under one arm and flew home.]
“Yes, and so did you, most as bad,” said Ben, bursting into a laugh. “I never will forget; you said I’d scared you most to death.”
“Well, and so you did,” declared Polly; “we didn’t see that dreadful chicken till you flapped it in our faces. It was lucky that the children weren’t there, or I don’t know but what the roof of The Little Brown House would have flown off with the noise.”