I AM very fond of the little ones, and like to have them around me, and as the puppies are in the majority it will be their turn to have a short story this time.
If you do not have to go home too soon perhaps I will have time to tell you more than one; we will see. Oh! the children are to stay to tea, are they? All right. Now, attention!
All those who would like to hear a story about a chicken—“a real truly story,” as the children say—wag your tails.
Those opposed, bark. Carried. The vote for the chicken story is about unanimous.
I suppose some of you have very poor opinions of chickens and hens; you think because they have but two legs, and are so easily frightened, they don’t amount to much; but the master and mistress think quite differently when they eat the nice fresh eggs which the hens furnish. Why, some of those proud young crowers have hearts as well as we. I remember so well a little old white blind hen which my master once had, and how kindly she was treated. (She could see just a little with one eye, but we called her blind.)
The young man who worked upon the place took a fancy to “Old Whitey,” as they called her, and when master wanted to send her to market this fellow pretended he couldn’t find her, so she was kept till very old.
The gallant young crowers which roosted in the same shed with her would never fight this old “grandmother,” but were just as kind to her as they knew how to be. Sometimes when one of them had found a nice lot of worms under something he had scratched over, “Whitey” would come along hungry, and he would leave the nice mess for her, and look further for himself.
Was not that gallant and kind? Would all of you do as well as that? Be as unselfish?
But this is not the chicken I was to tell you about. He was a poor orphan, his mother having died when he was but a little yellow ball upon two little pins of legs.
