There was a wide-branching oak tree on a knoll overlooking the brook. Around its trunk Uncle Joe had built a seat. Carolyn May found this a grand place to sit and dream, while Prince lay at her feet with his pink tongue out, occasionally snapping at a gnat.
When they saw Aunty Rose, in her sunbonnet, going towards the fenced-in garden, they both jumped up and bounded down the slope after her. It was just here, at the corner of the garden fence, that Carolyn May had her first adventure.
Prince, of course, disturbed the serenity of the poultry. The hens went shrieking one way, the guinea fowl lifted up their voices in angry chatter, the turkey hens scurried to cover, but the old turkey cock, General Bolivar, a big, white Holland fowl, was not to have his dignity disturbed and his courage impugned by any four-footed creature with waggish ears and the stump of a tail.
Therefore, General Bolivar charged with outspread wings and quivering fan. His eyesight was not good, however. He charged the little girl instead of the roistering dog.
Carolyn May frankly screamed. Thirty-five pounds, or more, of solid meat, frame, and feathers catapulted through the air at one is not to be ignored. Had the angry turkey reached the little girl, he would have beaten her down, and perhaps seriously injured her.
He missed her the first time, but turned to charge again. Prince barked loudly, circling around the bristling turkey cock, undecided just how to get into the battle. But Aunty Rose knew no fear of anything wearing feathers.
“Scat, you brute!” she cried, and made a grab for the turkey, gripping him with her left hand behind his head, bearing his long neck downward. In her other hand she seized a piece of lath, and with it chastised the big turkey across the haunches with vigour.
“Oh, don’t spank him any more, Aunty Rose!” gasped Carolyn May at last. “He must be sorry.”
With a final stroke Aunty Rose allowed the big fowl to go—and he ran away fast enough. But the austere Mrs. Kennedy did not consider the matter ended there. She had punished one culprit; now she turned to Prince.
“Your dog, child, does not know his manners. If he is going to stay here with you, he must learn that fowl are not to be chased nor startled.”