Ben’s decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word “Shanghai.”  Poor fellow!  He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don’t like to recall his sufferings.

The first I knew of it was by his starting and changing color one day, when I was reading the news from China to Kate in the garden, he being engaged in tying up a rose-bush close by.  Kate saw his confusion, and smiled.  Ben, catching the expression of her face, looked inconceivably sheepish.  He dropped his ball of twine, and was about to go away, but thinking better of it, he suddenly turned and said, with a grin and a blush,—­

“Ye’ll be telling on me, Miss Kathleen! so I’se be aforehond wi’ ye, and let Mr. Charlie knaw the warst frae my ain confassion, if he will na grudge me a quarter hour.”

I signified my wish to hear, and with much difficulty and many questions wrung from him his “confassion.”  Kate afterwards gave me her version, and the facts were these:—­

He persuaded Kate to let him buy a pair of Shanghais.

“But don’t do it unless you are sure of its being worth while,” Kate charged him; “because I can’t afford to be making expensive experiments.”

Ben counted out upon his fingers the numberless advantages.

“First, the valie o’ the eggs for sale, (mony ane had fetched a dollar,) forbye the ecawnomy in size for cooking, one shell handing the meat o’ twa common eggs.  Second, the size o’ the chickens for table, each hen the weight o’ a turkey.  Third, for speculation.  Let the neebors buy, and she could realize sixty dollar on the brood o’ twal’ chicks; for they fetched ten dollar the pair, and could be had for nae less onywheres.  Every hen wad hae twa broods at the smallest.”

Kate doubted, but handed over the money.  The next day she was awaked from a nap on the parlor sofa by a most unearthly music.  There was one bar of four notes, first and third accepted; bar second, a crescendo on a long swelled note, then a decrescendo equally long.

“Why,” she cried, “is that our little bull-calf practising singing?  I shall let Barnum know about him.  He’ll make my fortune!”

Ben knocked at the door, presented a radiant grin, and invited inspection of his Shanghais.  Kate went with him to the cellar.  There stood two feathered bipeds on their tip-toes, with their giraffe necks stretched up to my sister’s swinging shelf where the cream and butter were kept.  It spoke well for the size of their craws certainly, that, during the two minutes Ben was away, they had each devoured a “print” of butter, about half a pound!

“Saw ye ever the like o’ thae birds, Miss Kathleen?” began Ben, proudly.

“My butter, my butter!” cried Kate.

Ben ran to the rescue, and having removed everything to the high shelf, he came back, saying,—­

“It was na their faut.  I tak shame for not minding that they are so gay tall.  But did ye ever see the like o’ yon rooster?”