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I think he loved his sturdy family of Cochin Chinas best; for the great rooster, with his well-feathered legs and scarlet comb, always seemed to recognize him as a friend, and the plump hens laid the most delicious eggs, the exact hue of their own buff plumage. It was never any trouble to feed and water them, or to let them out of the hen-yard for a short run.
One-fourth of the ground, in the angle made by the open fence and one of the barns, had been a hen-yard and was still inclosed within a high wire-netting; but outside that space every plant she set out had to be protected from the grubbing fowls by four stakes driven down with a hammer. Three years afterward she bore off our capital prize in a competition of one hundred gardens.
When our larger commercial centers first began to change from villages to compact urban communities, there were those who found even these miniature cities far too congested. It was incomprehensible to them that a family should exist without land enough for such prime requisites as a cow, a hen-yard, and a vegetable garden.
Old Antony's knees creaked as she arose, but her wizened face was once more cheerful. "Beans in her broth to-night," she said. "One for 'woman'; another for the hen-yard; a third for threatening penance when I did but chant a melodious 'Amen. I'll give her beans castor beans!"
She must have heard the half-strangled sob burst from the slight figure stumbling up the steps before her, had not old Mary Antony been suddenly moved at that moment to uplift her voice in a cracked and raucous "Amen." Startled, and vexed at being startled, the Sub-Prioress turned upon Mary Antony. "Peace, woman!" she said. "The Convent cloister is not a hen-yard.
Possibly good gardening and an egg-producing hen-yard are the result of willingness to take infinite pains but, out of my disappointments and half successes, I am more inclined to hold that it is luck and predestination.
Of course that isn't so," concluded Tess. "When was it discovered?" asked Ruth. "Oh, I know! I know!" cried Dot, perilously balancing a spoonful of mush and milk on the way to her mouth, in midair. "It was in 1492 at Thanksgiving time, and the Pilgrim Fathers found it first. So they called it Plymouth Rock and you've got some of their hens in your hen-yard, Ruthie."
The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place in the farm work, answer him sonorously: the dog barked lazily as a nighthawk swept by, and in the distant hen-yard she heard a rooster crow.
"Wow!" sputtered Eph, enthusiastically. "Now," continued Mr. Pollard, earnestly, "of course we believe most thoroughly in this boat, but, until the actual trial is made, we don't know how she'll behave. If any of you feel like backing out, why, go ashore before we start, but keep your tongues behind your teeth." "Reminds me of what my Dad once did in the hen-yard," remarked Eph, in a low voice.
Tell him it's half-past nine if it's a minute, an' them old fowls what we're killin' off first is ruther tough. I ought to have her in the pot right now, an' there she ain't caught yet, runnin' 'round the hen-yard at loose ends, an' I'll try to catch her an' that'll help, an My suz! if that boy ain't half 'crost the pastur' an' me not done talkin' to him. The sassy thing!
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