Well, Elly was not the only one who had grown out of her old clothes this summer . . . the old garments that had been large enough and now must be laid aside! . . .  Elly was saying, “Mother, one of my chickens looks sick, and I don’t know what to do.  I wish you’d come!”

Marise began a process of mentally weighing which was more important, Scriabine or Elly’s chicken.  Elly looked at her mother with imploring eyes.  “Mother, he looked awfully sick.  And he is my nicest little Downy-head, the one I’ve always loved the best.  I’ve tried to take such good care of him.  Mother, I’m worried about him.”

Marise decided that Scriabine had at least the capacity to wait, while the chicken might not.  She got up, saying, “All right, Elly, we’ll see what we can do.”

Elly pulled her along rapidly to the chicken-yard where grossly self-satisfied hens scratched in trash and filth undiscriminatingly, and complacently called their families to share what they had found there, or indeed at times apparently to admire them for having found nothing.  Marise stood regarding them with a composed, ironic eye.  It was good, she reflected, to be able to know that that was the way you looked from the outside, and not to care a bit because you knew firmly that there was something else there that made all the difference.  All the same, it was a very good thing to have had the scaring thought that you were like that . . . “there but for the grace of God. . . .”  Was it complacent to say that?  Oh, what did it matter what you called it,—­complacent or not, if you knew!  It all came back to not caring so much about what things could be called, if you knew what they were.

Elly had disappeared into the chicken-house and now came back with a perplexed face.  “Downy-head was there, by the nests, and now he’s gone.”  Marise caught in the child’s eyes the realness of her anxiety and thrilled to it, as she always did to any real emotion.  “I’ll help you look,” she said, turning her eyes about the chicken-yard, crowded with voluble, intently self-centered, feathered personalities.  “Which hen is his mother, Elly?

“This one, Old Speckle.  Oh, Mother, there he is, lying down.  He must be feeling worse!” She ran forward and stooped over a little panting yellow ball.  Across the intervening space and beyond all those carelessly alive bodies, Marise’s eyes caught the unmistakable aspect of death in the tiny creature lying there.

“Mother!” cried Elly, “his eyes look so!  He can’t get his breath. Mother!” Marise felt the child’s agitation and alarm knock at her heart.  She looked down helplessly at the dying creature.  That tiny, tiny scrap of down-covered flesh to be alive, to contain the miracle and mystery of life, and now to be struggling, all alone, with the miracle and mystery of death!

The little thing opened its glazing eyes once more, drew a long breath, and lay still.  An age-old inherited knowledge and experience told Elly what bad happened.  She gave a scream, picked it up and held it in her cupped hands, her little face drawn in horrified incredulity.  She looked up at her mother and said in a whisper, “Mother, he’s dead.”