So she took him into the kitchen, and made him quite comfortable in a box half filled with cotton-batting, and placed near the stove. She gave him cracked-corn to eat, and plenty of water to drink, and, after a while, he got so strong, that he hopped out of the box, and was just as jolly a chicken as he could be, with only one eye to see with, and only one foot and the stump of another to walk on.
Still he would not go out and play with other chickens of his age, but persisted in hanging around the kitchen. One morning, when Aunt Jane went into the breakfast-room, she found him on the table, helping himself from a dish of stewed potatoes. Such impudence could no longer be tolerated: so the saucy little cripple was banished to the barnyard to learn manners.
And what do you think became of the unmotherly hen? She lost all her friends. She was despised and hated by everybody on the farm. She was pointed at as "that cruel, speckled hen," until life became a burden to her. She was not permitted to have any more chickens. When the cold weather came, she was sent to a poor woman for a thanksgiving dinner; and it is to be hoped that all the hens in the barnyard took warning from her fate.
C.R.W.
Lansingburgh. N.Y.
Outline Drawing by Mr. Harrison Weir, as a drawing lesson.