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There were Shanghais and Cochin-Chinas, and Guinea hens, and Barbary hens, and speckled hens, and Poland roosters, and bantams, and ducks, and turkeys, but not one goose! "No geese but ourselves," said Mrs. Peterkin, wittily, as they returned to the house. The sight of this procession roused up the village.
She could not blink the fact that, did it come to their ears, they would call her in earnest, what Pin had called her in her temper bad and wicked. Home was, alas! no longer the snug nest in which she was safe from the slings and shanghais of the world.
That was the way the Shanghais, Black Spanish, Dorking, and Bantam fowls felt. They were polite enough to the newcomer, but they did not run after him. The Chickens used to laugh when the Peacock uttered his cry of "Paon! Paon!" His voice was harsh and disagreeable, and it did seem so funny to hear such dreadful sounds coming from such a lovely throat.
The good woman followed him to his wagon, where he dismounted his coop, and revealed as scurvy a lot of chickens as eye ever rested upon, all of which he swore by his military reputation, would come to rare Shanghais, and get big enough to eat off barrel-heads in less than two months.
It was a very learned body, but Phoebe had coached me so well that at the noon recess I could talk confidently with the members, discussing the various advantages of True and Crossed Minorcas, Feverels, Andalusians, Cochin Chinas, Shanghais, and the White Leghorn.
Yet these artfully studied qualifications of the cloying sweet may have been all of the taste of wormwood to the honored guest, who cared nothing for his easy triumph with shanghais and the pip and these two-yolk eggs, but prided himself on his bantams and his hen-food, and was clinging to the hope that his discoveries in the higher education would teach hens to observe the legal holidays if they could not be taught to lay on every working-day, and was trusting to keep his measure of failure a secret from the world.
"However, as it is wicked to contemplate matrimony with a wife on hand, I must console myself with having cleared in the trade with her and the fishmonger, at least two dollars and forty cents. The chickens are not what she takes them for. There can be no doubt of their coming to Shanghais, but as to their eating off barrel heads, they can do that now, only set the barrel heads upon the ground.
As the wagon rolled over the road, a cackling noise was kept up, much to my surprise and annoyance; this I found was caused by a coop of disconsolate chickens, which the major had bought on speculation, and fastened to the back of his wagon, intending to make a good thing by selling them for Shanghais whenever he could find a customer.
In their fierce rivalry of adulation, some of them, in order to give fresh flavor to the taffy, may have mingled a little vinegar with it. One may have said that the bantams of the honored guest were not perhaps as small as some other bantams, but that the colossal size of his shanghais was beyond parallel.
It was very foolish, of course, to be proud of such things, but when the other fowls said, "We should think you would be cold without feathers on your legs," they answered, "Oh, we are Shanghais, and our family never wear feathers there!" And that was true, just as it is true that the Dorkings have extra toes, and that the Black Spanish fowls have white ears.
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