and a good pole for his family to roost on.  He made, moreover, a row of nice little boxes with hay in them for nests, and he bought three or four little smooth white china eggs to put in them, so that, when his hens did lay, he might carry off their eggs without their being missed.  This hen-house stood in a little grove that sloped down to a wide river, just where there was a little cove which reached almost to the hen-house.

This situation inspired one of Master Fred’s boy advisers with a new scheme in relation to his poultry enterprise.  “Hallo!  I say, Fred,” said Tom Seymour, “you ought to raise ducks; you’ve got a capital place for ducks there.”

“Yes; but I’ve bought hens, you see,” said Freddy; “so it’s no use trying.”

“No use!  Of course there is.  Just as if your hens couldn’t hatch ducks’ eggs.  Now you just wait till one of your hens wants to sit, and you put ducks’ eggs under her, and you’ll have a family of ducks in a twinkling.  You can buy ducks’ eggs a plenty of old Sam under the hill.  He always has hens hatch his ducks.”

So Freddy thought it would be a good experiment, and informed his mother the next morning that he intended to furnish the ducks for the next Christmas dinner and when she wondered how he was to come by them, he said mysteriously, “Oh, I will show you how,” but did not further explain himself.  The next day he went with Tom Seymour and made a trade with old Sam, and gave him a middle-aged jack-knife for eight of his ducks’ eggs.  Sam, by-the-by, was a woolly-headed old negro man, who lived by the pond hard by, and who had long cast envying eyes on Fred’s jack-knife, because it was of extra fine steel, having been a Christmas present the year before.  But Fred knew very well there were any number more of jack-knives where that came from, and that, in order to get a new one, he must dispose of the old; so he made the purchase and came home rejoicing.

Now about this time Mrs. Feathertop, having laid her eggs daily with great credit to herself, notwithstanding Mrs. Scratchard’s predictions, began to find herself suddenly attacked with nervous symptoms.  She lost her gay spirits, grew dumpish and morose, stuck up her feathers in a bristling way, and pecked at her neighbours if they did so much as look at her.  Master Gray Cock was greatly concerned, and went to old Dr. Peppercorn, who looked solemn, and recommended an infusion of angle-worms, and said he would look in on the patient twice a day till she was better.

“Gracious me, Gray Cock!” said old Goody Kertarkut, who had been lolling at the corner as he passed, “ain’t you a fool?—cocks always are fools.  Don’t you know what’s the matter with your wife?  She wants to sit, that’s all; and you just let her sit.  A fiddlestick for Dr. Peppercorn!  Why, any good old hen that has brought up a family knows more than a doctor about such things.  You just go home and tell her to sit if she wants to, and behave herself.”

When Gray Cock came home, he found that Master Freddy had been before him, and had established Mrs. Feathertop upon eight nice eggs, where she was sitting in gloomy grandeur.  He tried to make a little affable conversation with her, and to relate his interview with the doctor and Goody Kertarkut; but she was morose and sullen, and only pecked at him now and then in a very sharp, unpleasant way.  So after a few more efforts to make himself agreeable he left her, and went out promenading with the captivating Mrs. Red Comb, a charming young Spanish widow, who had just been imported into the neighbouring yard.

“Bless my soul,” said he, “you’ve no idea how cross my wife is.”

“O you horrid creature!” said Mrs. Red Comb.  “How little you feel for the weaknesses of us poor hens!”

“On my word, ma’am,” said Gray Cock, “you do me injustice.  But when a hen gives way to temper, ma’am, and no longer meets her husband with a smile—when she even pecks at him whom she is bound to honour and obey—”

“Horrid monster! talking of obedience!  I should say, sir, you came straight from Turkey.”  And Mrs. Red Comb tossed her head with a most bewitching air, and pretended to run away; and old Mrs. Scratchard looked out of her coop and called to Goody Kertarkut,—

“Look how Mr. Gray Cock is flirting with that widow.  I always knew she was a baggage.”

“And his poor wife left at home alone,” said Goody Kertarkut.  “It’s the way with ’em all!”

“Yes, yes,” said Dame Scratchard, “she’ll know what real life is now, and she won’t go about holding her head so high, and looking down on her practical neighbours that have raised families.”

“Poor thing! what’ll she do with a family?” said Goody Kertarkut.

“Well, what business have such young flirts to get married?” said Dame Scratchard.  “I don’t expect she’ll raise a single chick; and there’s Gray Cock flirting about, fine as ever.  Folks didn’t do so when I was young.  I’m sure my husband knew what treatment a sitting hen ought to have,—poor old Long Spur! he never minded a peck or so and then.  I must say these modern fowls ain’t what fowls used to be.”

Meanwhile the sun rose and set, and Master Fred was almost the only friend and associate of poor little Mrs. Feathertop, whom he fed daily with meal and water, and only interrupted her sad reflections by pulling her up occasionally to see how the eggs were coming on.

At last “Peep, peep, peep,” began to be heard in the nest, and one little downy head after another poked forth from under the feathers, surveying the world with round, bright, winking eyes; and gradually the brood were hatched, and Mrs. Feathertop arose, a proud and happy mother, with all the bustling, scratching, care-taking instincts of family-life warm within her breast.  She clucked and scratched, and cuddled the little downy bits of things as handily and discreetly as a seven-year-old hen could have done, exciting thereby the wonder of the community.

Master Gray Cock came home in high spirits, and complimented her; told her she was looking charmingly once more, and said, “Very well, very nice,” as he surveyed the young brood.  So that Mrs. Feathertop began to feel the world going well with her, when suddenly in came Dame Scratchard and Goody Kertarkut to make a morning call.

“Let’s see the chicks,” said Dame Scratchard.

“Goodness me,” said Goody Kertarkut, “what a likeness to their dear papa!”

“Well, but bless me, what’s the matter with their bills?” said Dame Scratchard.  “Why, my dear, these chicks are deformed!  I’m sorry for you, my dear; but it’s all the result of your inexperience.  You ought to have eaten pebble-stones with your meal when you were sitting.  Don’t you see, Dame Kertarkut, what bills they have?  That’ll increase, and they’ll be frightful!”

“What shall I do?” said Mrs. Feathertop, now greatly alarmed.

“Nothing, as I know of,” said Dame Scratchard, “since you didn’t come to me before you sat.  I could have told you all about it.  Maybe it won’t kill ’em, but they’ll always be deformed.”

And so the gossips departed, leaving a sting under the pin-feathers of the poor little hen mamma, who began to see that her darlings had curious little spoon-bills, different from her own, and to worry and fret about it.

“My dear,” she said to her spouse, “do get Dr.