United States or Guyana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then she found an appreciative friend in the little girl's mother, who, whenever she heard a proud, discordant announcement, half crow, half cackle, blessed the little white hen as she hurried to secure the offering. One afternoon during Sassy's career of prolificacy, the little girl remembered that her best thick dress was so threadbare that she would need a brand-new one for the next winter.
But, influenced by her long dislike of the pullet, and recalling her tiresome experience of the afternoon, she chuckled to think that she would soon have her hands clasped tightly about Sassy's yellow legs. "I'll not make a mistake this time," she said to herself. She entered the barn slyly and stole down behind the stalls until she came opposite the perches.
The youngest brother, overhearing the account of Sassy's conduct and the eldest brother's comments, volunteered the opinion that nothing ailed the chicken but the pip, and advised fat and pepper. But when three days had gone by and the leghorn, with generous doses of axle-grease and cayenne, ailed rather than recovered, the little girl ceased her administrations.
She was thinking, with the hopefulness of youth, over Sassy's future possibilities. "She'll surely start laying again some time," she mused, "and I'll borrow a hen from mother to set on the eggs. So I'll have all those chickens, and when they grow up I'll have all their eggs, and some of them will set, and " She lost herself in an endless chain of computation.
The little girl was in despair, and at once confided Sassy's delinquency to the eldest brother, who knew a great deal about chickens. He said that a leghorn was an all-year-round layer, and that when a hen of the breed failed to uphold the standard of her kind she was fit only for broiling.
Word Of The Day