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"Then I'll take one home to Mrs. Reddy. If there is time we both will come back for a couple more." So Reddy made pleasant plans as he approached Farmer Brown's henhouse. When he reached it he paused to listen to certain sounds within, certain fretful little cluckings. Reddy sat down for a minute with his tongue hanging out and the water actually dripping from it.
As for the fowls they were greedily pecking away at the seeds and worms in the banks of the rivulet. Animal life was already manifesting itself in such goings and comings, such flights and gambols, such bleatings and gruntings and cluckings as had doubtless never been heard of in these parts before.
Little, delicate, sweet-smelling airs floated over the tops of the hedges from the fields beyond, and now and then a few stray notes of a blackbird's song stole out from a plantation near at hand, breaking off suddenly and dying down into drowsy, contented little cluckings and twitterings.
Then the tardy bell rang and Miss Brown began roll call. "Anna Boguslawsky," came her clear, even tones as the "B" names were reached. Hardly had Anna's timid "Here" reached her ears than a series of subdued cluckings came from some small boy's throat. She rapped for order and went on. "Edna Bowman." "Clu-wawk, clu-wawk," repeated the offender.
Then he cried, 'For this, praise we Allah and the Prophet. Wullahy, 'twas wondrous! and he went off again into a roll of cluckings and chucklings and exclamations of delight, crying, 'Need they further proof of the power in Shagpat now? Has he not manifested it? So true is that saying "The friend that flattereth weakeneth at length; It is the foe that calleth forth our strength."
He turned again to his patient, producing a probe. "Very deplorable!" Mr. Caryll heard him muttering, parrot-like. A pause ensued, and a silence broken only by occasional cluckings from the little doctor, and Mr. Caryll stood by, a prey to an anguish more poignant than he had ever known. At last there was a groan from the wounded man. Mr. Caryll started forward.
Then he cried, 'For this, praise we Allah and the Prophet. Wullahy, 'twas wondrous! and he went off again into a roll of cluckings and chucklings and exclamations of delight, crying, 'Need they further proof of the power in Shagpat now? Has he not manifested it? So true is that saying "The friend that flattereth weakeneth at length; It is the foe that calleth forth our strength."
"Perhaps she is there" He would say to himself, and approaching the house he would lift the heavy knocker and let it fall timidly. Immediately the song and the laughter stop. Nothing can be heard within but faint vague cluckings as if in a sleeping hen-house.
The yard seemed very full of animals, and where there were no animals there were hay-ricks and corn, and empty upturned carts and waggons. It was a lonely-looking place in that evening light, and the melancholy mooing of the cows, the good-night cluckings of the hens, the bleating of the sheep, seemed to add to the desolateness.
"Oh, Aaron," sobbed his wife, and continued to moan. "Oh, Aaron " with soft, heartbreaking cluckings. "Once the law of land-piruts gets a bight 'round ye, ye never git away from it," groaned the Cap'n. "The law sharks is always waitin' for seafarin' men. There ain't no hope for me." His wife had no encouragement to offer. "Murder will out, Aaron," she quaked. "And they've sent three constables."
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