This was delightful! He would try nipping them.
That was still better fun. Pretty soon he caught one, gave it a little shaking up, and it lay quite still and limp. He turned to find a livelier one, but just then the mistress of the house where he was trespassing, saw him, and he received a good banging over the head with a broom.
He concluded that he had had enough sport for one day, and went home. An hour later a boy from the house where the chickens lived, went to Dr. Johns’ office with a dead chicken in his hand, for which Dr. Johns promptly paid. It appears that chickens have a market value which cats have not, and one may not destroy them so freely.
To punish Van away from the game would have been useless. Dr. Johns gave forth the order that he must be kept at home, and not allowed out except on a chain.
This was terrible. Van’s life had been one long joy, with no confinement whatever, except in those early mad-dog days. The whole world had been his, and now it was taken away from him—from him, Prince Vanart VI.!
But alack and alas! this did not cure him. One morning he slipped out through a carelessly unlatched door, and was off down the hill as fast as his little legs could carry him.
By some luck—hard luck for Vanny-Boy—Betsy saw him and started after him at the top of her speed, stopping only long enough to take the whip. At the foot of the hill stood a house with a chicken-yard behind it. A few stately old biddies were stalking around the lawn after worms and insects, while a still statelier old rooster strutted up and down importantly.
Van saw them and turned in. He must make the most of his liberty, and no time was to be lost. He grabbed at an old white hen, but she was too heavy for him. He turned away with his mouth full of feathers and tackled another with the same result. By this time the whole lawn was in an uproar, and had it not been so early in the morning some one from the house must certainly have seen him.
Betsy was on the way, however, and she advanced to the rescue of old hen number three. Van was very busy indeed, but these hens were all too big. He gripped another, with one eye on the rooster;——
Down came the whip over his back, just missing him, for he was now on his way to the chicken-yard, where the birds were smaller. Betsy followed, and just as he made a dash for a nice broiler, she stepped inside and closed the gate behind her.