Title:  Dew Drops, Vol. 37.  No. 16., April 19, 1914

Author:  Various
        Edited by George E. Cook

Release Date:  December 7, 2004 [EBook #14283]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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DEW DROPS

Vol. 37.  No. 16.  Weekly.

DAVID C. COOK PUBLISHING CO., ELGIN, ILLINOIS.

George E. Cook, editor.

April 19, 1914.

A SYRUP-CAN MOTHER

By Mary Gilbert.

Dorothy Deane and her little brother Laurence were standing by the window watching for papa.

“There he comes!” cried Dorothy at last, and the children raced toward the corner as fast as their chubby little legs would carry them.

“Careful now!” said papa warningly, as the two hurrying little figures reached him.  “Don’t hit against my dinner pail!”

“What is in it?” asked Dorothy and Laurence in one breath, as they stood on tiptoe, trying to peep inside the cover.

“Guess!” said papa, laughing.  “A nickel to the one who guesses right!”

“Candy!” cried Laurence.

“Oranges!” said Dorothy.

Papa shook his head at both these guesses, and at all the others that followed, until they had reached the house.

“Now let mamma have a turn,” he said, holding the dinner pail up to her ear.

“Why, it isn’t—­” mamma began, with a look of greatest surprise.

“Yes, it is!” papa declared.  Then he took off the cover and tipped the pail gently over in the middle of the kitchen table and out came ten of the fluffiest, downiest little chickens that any of them had ever seen.

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the children delightedly.  “Are they really ours?  Where did you get them?”

“They are power-house chickens,” papa replied, smiling at their enthusiasm—­“hatched right in the engine room!”

“What do you mean?” asked mamma in astonishment, gazing at the pretty little creatures.

“Just what I say,” replied papa, who was an engineer in the big power house down town:  “they were hatched on a shelf in the engine room.”

“It was just this way,” he explained, hanging up his hat.  “Tom Morgan brought me a dozen eggs from his new hennery about three weeks ago.  I put them on the shelf, intending to bring them home that night, but never thought of them until this morning, when there seemed to be something stirring up there.  I looked, and, sure enough, there was a fine brood of chickens, just picking their way out of their shells!”