But there wasn't any help for it, and he went at it.
The old rooster came along pretty soon. Ned knew he never did any harm, as he was too well-behaved a bird to scratch in the garden, but he wanted to vent his spite on something, so he up with a big stone and shied it at the rooster's head, not once thinking that it would hit him. But it did, and with one shrill squawk the fowl gave a leap into the air, kicked about wildly, and fell dead.
Ned was frightened. What would his father say? He had been very careful of the rooster, because he came of a choice breed. What should he do with him? While he was debating the question with himself, who should come along but his mother.
"Why, Ned!" exclaimed she, seeing the poor old rooster lying there, with one claw stretched up pathetically, as if to call a sympathetic attention to his tragic fate. "How did this happen?"
"Well, you see," began Ned, at a loss for an explanation, "he came along, and I thought maybe he'd go scratching, and I shoed him, but he wouldn't go off. Then I threw a stone that way, and it must have hit him, 'cause——"
"You weren't afraid he would scratch, because he never did that," said Ned's mother severely. "I am very sorry to see you in such a bad temper to-day. Go right up to the garret and stay there till your father comes home. I don't know what he will say when he knows of this."
Ned took himself off to the garret, congratulating himself that that wasn't quite as bad as weeding onions. But he was terribly troubled about what his father would say. He couldn't get that out of his mind.
By and by he heard some one coming up the garret stairs. It sounded like Bridget's steps. A pan stood near by, which had been placed under a leak in the roof, and was full of water. Before he stopped to think what the consequence might be—he felt so ugly that he didn't care much—Ned seized the pan full of water, and just as a head made its appearance in the shadowy depths of the garret stairway he let fly pan and all in that direction.
There was an awful spluttering, as if the water had taken the visitor fairly in the face.
Ned turned pale. It wasn't Bridget, after all, but his father.