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Passing behind a wooden fence which was a tangle of passion-flower, she opened the door of the fowl-house, and out strutted the mother-hen followed by her pretty brood. Laura had given each of the chicks a name, and she now took Napoleon and Garibaldi up in her hand and laid her cheek against their downy breasts, the younger children following her movements in respectful silence.
As we came up the harbor, I had noticed that the houses were huddled together on an immense bill, at the top of which was a large building, the State House, towering proudly above the rest, like an amiable mother-hen surrounded by her brood of many-colored chickens. A closer inspection did not impress me very favorably.
Robert "sat in" now and then at poker. He had a little of his father's love for Chance, but a restraining sanity left him little the loser in the long run. Robert had three children, the eldest a girl of twelve. Petite and dainty Maizie had become a plump and bustling mother-hen.
True, Jess was a very gentle beast, so quiet that the old mother-hen with fourteen chicks used, instead of roosting with the rest of the fowls, to come regularly into the portion of the cow-shed which was partitioned off for a stable, and settle under a corner of Jess's manger for the night; and in the morning the chicks would be seen running about fearlessly among her feet and under her very nose.
So, instead of going to bed under his big coal for the day, when, after breakfast, the children and their mother came out to look at a new brood of chickens, he crept after them and hid behind the hencoop where the old mother-hen was put, with her young ones round her. There had been great difficulty in getting her in there, for she was a hen who hatched her brood on independent principles.
Doctor Vehrner was sitting on the floor, with his back to the chair Colonel Hampton had occupied, his injured leg stretched out in front of him. Albert was hovering over him with mother-hen solicitude. T. Barnwell Powell was finishing his whiskey and recovering a fraction of his normal poise. "Well, I suppose you gentlemen see, now, who was really crazy around here?"
But this instinct retained by our chickens has become useless under domestication, for the mother-hen has almost lost by disuse the power of flight.
That very minute a little wee brown face peered through a hole in the hencoop, making the old mother-hen fly furiously at it as she did at the slightest shadow of an enemy to her little ones. However, no harm happened only a guinea-fowl suddenly ran across the farmyard, screaming in its usual harsh voice. But it was not the usual sort of guinea-fowl, being larger and handsomer than any of theirs.
Her artistic sense was too keen to allow of any shortcoming in this respect; but she seemed blessed with a capacity of acting before she thought, which had many disastrous consequences. She was by no means a robust girl, and Mrs Asplin fussed over her little ailments like an old mother-hen with a delicate nursling.
If you have ever seen a mother-hen taking care of her chicks, calling them to her when she fears any danger for them, and hiding them beneath her soft warm wings, you will better understand the words which the Lord Jesus spoke when He beheld Jerusalem, the beloved city, and wept over it.
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