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Updated: June 7, 2025
From the small coops beside the hen-house came an anxious clucking as the fluffy yellow chickens strayed beneath the uneven edges of their pointed prisons and made independent excursions into the world. In the far east the day was slowly breaking, and the open country was flooded with pale, washed-out grays, like the background of an impressionist painting.
Ronald was nothing loth to escape from his aunt's neighbourhood, and left the room and the cottage with a silent expedition that was more like flight than mere obedience. Meanwhile the old lady turned to her niece. "And I would like to know what we are to do with him the night!" she cried. "Ronald and I meant to put him in the hen-house," said the encrimsoned Flora.
"Miss Cecilia 'splained it all to me and she's my Sunday-School teacher and rabbits is bound to lay eggs 'cause it's in the Bible and she's 'bout the prettiest 'splainer they is. I'm going over there now to see 'bout my eggs," and he made believe to leave the swing. "Le's us slip roun' to the hen-house an' see what the of hen's a-doin'," suggested the sorely tempted Billy.
Then the girl's father came out and scolded her; and I glided away and thought no more of the matter. "But this evening, only a few minutes ago, I looked down into the same courtyard. Everything was quiet. But presently the little girl came forth again, crept quietly to the hen-house, pushed back the bolt, and slipped into the apartment of the hen and chickens.
How poor, how wretched everything the woodpile, the cabin, the hen-house, the ice-house, the barn! Was this any part of the great world? It was one picture of desolation, the creeping paralysis of a house and farm. Did anything even move? Something did move. A column of blue smoke moved straight and thin from the chimney of his father's and mother's room.
It stopped snowing early the next morning, but the snow-plough did not get around in time for the children to go to school. It was just after dinner when Tom and Christopher appeared. "We've come to make a path to your front door, Mrs. Owen," Tom said. "And we'll make one to the hen-house, too." They had brought their snow-shovels along with them, and they began to dig with a will.
For the first time in my recollection we offered each other our bacon, and one at the end of breakfast said he had had enough. You would have thought we had just gained a famous victory. Half of us went forward with the column. The rest remained for a slaughterous hour. First we went to the hen-house, and in ten minutes had placed ten dripping victims in the French gendarme captain's car.
There are three stories at our place, and for staircases to reach the top ones there are long sloping boards, like those you've seen put for chickens to get into a hen-house, with little boards across to make steps, only, of course, ours are a bit bigger than the chickens'. Why, yes, don't laugh; I could not walk up a chicken-ladder, could I? In our stable we stand in long rows, a row on each side, with our heels together in the middle, and heads to the walls, and between the two rows of heels there's just enough room for a man to pass.
She's discovered something which I didn't intend her to find out.... And Olie, also by the way, has solved the problem of "breaking up" my setting hens. He has made a swinging coop with a wire netting bottom, for all the world like the hanging gardens of Babylon, and into this all the ruffled mothers-to-be have been thrust and the coop hung up on the hen-house wall.
"We had some barn kittens once that lived in the hen-house, ate with the hens, and quarrelled with them for any tidbit. They curled up in the egg boxes and didn't move when the hens came to lay, and evidently had no idea that they were not hens. "Oh, there is no end to the cat situation.
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