She didn’t ask me, probably because Uncle Peabody had explained in his own way, and requested her to say nothing.

The worst was over for that day but the Baynes-Wills feud had begun.  It led to many a fight in the school yard and on the way home.  We were so evenly matched that our quarrel went on for a long time and gathered intensity as it continued.

One day Uncle Peabody had given me an egg and, said that there was a chicken in it.

“All ye have to do is to keep it warm an’ the chicken will come to life, and when the hen is off the nest some day it will see light through the shell and peck its way out,” he explained.

He marked my initials on the egg and put it under a hen and by and by a little chicken came out of the shell.  I held it in my palm—­a quivering, warm handful of yellow down.  Its helplessness appealed to me and I fed and watched it every day.  Later my uncle told me that it was a hen chick and would be laying eggs in four months.  He added: 

“It’s the only thing it can do, an’ if it’s let alone it’ll be sure to do it.  Follows a kind of a compass that leads to the nest every time.”

This chicken grew into a little spotted hen.  She became my sole companion in many a lonely hour when Uncle Peabody had gone to the village, or was working in wet ground, or on the hay rack, or the mowing machine where I couldn’t be with him.  She was an amiable, confiding little hen who put her trust in me and kept it unto the day of her death, which came not until she had reached the full dignity of mature henhood.

She was like many things on the farm—­of great but unconsidered beauty.  No far-fetched pheasant was half so beautiful as she.  I had always treated her with respect, and she would let me come and sit beside her while she rolled in the dust and permit me to stroke her head and examine her wonderful dress of glossy mottled satin.  She would spread her glowing sleeves in the sunlight, and let me feel their downy lining with my fingers and see how their taut snug-fitting plumes were set.

I remember a day when she was sitting on her nest with that curious expression in her eyes which seemed to say, “Please don’t bother me now for this is my busy time,” I brought three little kittens from their basket in the wood-shed and put them under her.  The kittens felt the warmth of her body and began to mew and stir about.  I shall never forget the look of astonishment in the little hen as she slowly rose in her nest and peered beneath her body at the kittens.  She looked at me as if to say that she really couldn’t be bothered with those furry things any longer—­they made her so nervous.  She calmly took hold of one of them with her bill and lifted it out of the nest.  She continued this process of eviction until they were all removed, when she quietly sat down again.

[Illustration:  Slowly her right hand rose above her]