“See there,” I said to Bentcomb, “look at those lonesome old hens! They’re clucking around just like you’ve been doing. Every one of them wanted a family of her own, and not one of them is going to get it! If you don’t be good, and go in that coop like we want you to, we’ll have to shut you up in here and leave you for two whole weeks, which we do to all hens who want to ‘set’ and we won’t let ’em.”
Say, Bentcomb wasn’t interested at all. She absolutely refused to look, so I took her back again to the coop. “I’m going to give you one more chance,” I said. “I want you to go in there carefully, not breaking any of those eggs, and behave yourself.”
Once more I got down on my knees, holding her carefully like she was a very good friend, which she was, and so she could look in and see for herself what we wanted her to do.
Well sir, this time she must have decided to be good, ’cause all of a sudden, she quit struggling and looked in like she’d made up her mind it might be a good place for her to live for awhile. Without me doing any pushing, or anything, she very slowly started to creep inside the opening in the coop, toward the eggs. The next thing I knew she was on the nest, turning around and scooting herself down and spreading her wings out and settling down and covering every one of those fifteen eggs with her wings.
I turned and yelled, “MOM! She’s gone in! She’s going to set!”
“Put the board over the hole for a while,” Mom said, “so she can’t get out. Let her stay until she feels at home, and then she’ll go back every time we let her out for exercise and water and food.”
I put the rectangular shaped board over the door of Bentcomb’s house, and propped it shut with a brick, so she couldn’t get out.
And so we “set” my favorite hen, Old Bentcomb. In just three weeks there’d be a whole nestful of cheeping chicks and a very proud mamma hen. I sat down for a minute on the roof of her house to rest. I was almost overworked, I started to think, when Pop yelled, “Hey, Bill! Come on out! We’ve got to get the rest of the chores done!” So I started to the barn to help him do them, still thinking about the camping trip we’d all been invited to take, and wondering if I could get to go.
“Don’t you feel well?” Pop asked me when I was moving slowly around in the barn doing different things.
“Kinda worn out,” I said, and the dust which I’d been stirring up with a pitchfork over our corn elevator made me sneeze twice. “Maybe I’ve got hayfever,” I said.