Papa shook his head at both these guesses, and at all the others that followed, until they had reached the house.
"Now let mamma have a turn," he said, holding the dinner pail up to her ear.
"Why, it isn't—" mamma began, with a look of greatest surprise.
"Yes, it is!" papa declared. Then he took off the cover and tipped the pail gently over in the middle of the kitchen table and out came ten of the fluffiest, downiest little chickens that any of them had ever seen.
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the children delightedly. "Are they really ours? Where did you get them?"
"They are power-house chickens," papa replied, smiling at their enthusiasm—"hatched right in the engine room!"
"What do you mean?" asked mamma in astonishment, gazing at the pretty little creatures.
"Just what I say," replied papa, who was an engineer in the big power house down town: "they were hatched on a shelf in the engine room."
"It was just this way," he explained, hanging up his hat. "Tom Morgan brought me a dozen eggs from his new hennery about three weeks ago. I put them on the shelf, intending to bring them home that night, but never thought of them until this morning, when there seemed to be something stirring up there. I looked, and, sure enough, there was a fine brood of chickens, just picking their way out of their shells!"
"But how did it ever happen?" asked mamma in a puzzled tone.