laid across from the stairs to the coal-bin for the cats to descend.
They stalked over in haughty silence, one after the other, and ignored
the whole proceeding from that time forth. Indeed, Weejums could never
even bear to hear it mentioned; perhaps because she felt that her
dignity had been compromised.
But Cyclone breakfasted with the family that morning, and his extra
bone was as sweet as his heart was proud.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FAMILY IN THE PIANO BOX
When Franklin went out into the yard on his birthday morning, he
stopped and stared very hard at something that had never been there
before.
It was a piano box, with an open space fenced off at one side, and a
square hole leading into it, and at the end of the box was a real door,
high enough for a boy to use.
“Why, where—” Franklin began, and then he heard a shout of laughter
from Eunice and Bridget and Kenneth, who were watching him from the
shed. Mrs. Wood was there, too, smiling at his astonishment.
“They’re chickens,” she explained. “Grandmother thought you didn’t
spend enough time out of doors.”
“When did they come?” Franklin asked.
“Last night. And the house was built yesterday, while you were over at
Fred’s. That’s Grandma’s present too.”
“Well, I’ll be—thunderstruck!” Franklin exclaimed. “Oh, I say, what a
bully padlock! Isn’t Grandmother a brick? Are they in there now?”
“Go and see,” said his mother, handing him the key.
Franklin unlocked the door, with shining eyes and a new feeling of
importance. There was money in chickens, everybody said.
A fine young rooster was standing solemnly in his pan of food,
surrounded by five admiring wives, who cocked their heads at Franklin
as he approached.
“Plymouth Rocks!” he exclaimed. “Oh, Mother, these are first-rate
chickens!”
“Let them out!” Mrs. Wood called. “The little door lifts up.”
Franklin opened the door, and the fowls strutted out in thoughtful
procession, winking their lemon-colored eyes at the sun. Then the
rooster drew a long breath, raised his head to an alarming height,
and, after several attempts, indulged in a strange sound which he had
evidently planned for a crow. His wives all looked impressed; but
Franklin laughed, and Eunice, who came running out in her coat and red
“pussy” hood, asked: “Oh, Franklin, is that poor hen sick?” Mrs. Wood
and Kenneth came out too, and discussed names for the new arrivals.
“They ought to have colonial titles,” Mrs. Wood said; “but I can’t
think of anything but ‛Praise God Barebones,’ and that wouldn’t be
handy to call one by.”
“There was John Alden, Mother,” Franklin suggested.
“Why, of course, and Priscilla—and Rose Standish.”
“And Columbus!” added Kenneth, with pride.
“They don’t all need to be Puritans,” Franklin said, “I’d rather have
some of them more modern. Just see that one there with the extra ruffle
on her comb! I’m going to call her Veatra Peck. And the stiff one that
does stunts with her toes every time she puts ’em down,—doesn’t she
walk like Miss Hannah Wakefield? I’m going to call her Hannah.”
“Hannah Squawk,” Eunice said. “That’s a pretty name.”
“Uncle Edward sent word that he’ll pay five cents apiece for eggs when
your hens begin laying,” Mrs. Wood said. “He always likes a boiled egg
for his breakfast, and can never be sure that store eggs are perfectly
fresh.”
Franklin was delighted, and went up that evening to talk business with
Mr. Bates. His uncle said that he knew of still another gentleman who
would pay as much for fresh eggs,—indeed, he and this man had become
acquainted through sharing a bad egg at a restaurant. They said that
nothing made people such good friends as having a common enemy.
But Franklin’s hens did not begin to lay until March, and then they
seemed to have no ideas at all about the proper place for eggs.
Franklin found them on the hen-house floor, and out in the yard, and
very often they were broken. One hen persisted in laying what Eunice
called “soft-boiled eggs,”—those without a shell,—until Franklin put
crushed oyster-shells in her food; and then she laid ordinary Easter
eggs like the others.
Somebody gave Eunice a bantam named Flossy, who laid cunning little
white eggs like marshmallows, which Eunice had for her breakfast.
Franklin received enough from the sale of the eggs to buy wheat
screenings, and other food for his “birds,” as he called them; but he
made nothing more, and soon began to feel the disadvantage of owning
such idiotic pets.
“They never reason about anything,” he complained; “and they haven’t
any sense of humor. They can’t see a joke even when it’s on them.”
“I don’t like ’em,” Kenneth said; “they’re not warm and cuddly like
Weejums, or funny like Cyclone. They’re not much different from what
they are fricasseed—’cept for the gravy.”
Soon after the hens began to lay, they showed a desire to sit, so
Franklin bought a dozen grocery-store eggs for Veatra Peck; but had to
move her into the woodshed, because all the other hens tried to sit at
the same time in Veatra’s box. He felt rather surprised and grieved
that Veatra should stop laying while she sat, but said, “I suppose she
thinks she laid all those grocery-store eggs, and feels that she’s done
enough.”
He waited until Veatra had sat for a week; then a fit of impatience
seized him.
“I don’t believe all those eggs are good,” he announced at breakfast
one day.
“It isn’t time for them to be out yet,” his mother said. “Yes, I know;
but Veatra ought not to be wasting her strength hatching bad eggs. I’m
just going to investigate a little, and see how they’re coming on.”
“Of course you know that if you do that, it will kill the chickens.”
“Not the way I’ve thought of.”
And that day after school the way was carried into effect.
Franklin chipped a little hole in each shell, and pasted court-plaster
over the hole in those eggs that contained chickens. The others he
threw away, and was quite triumphant to find that there were only seven
good eggs out of the dozen.
“You see,” he told his mother, “it would have been such a pity for
Veatra to sit another whole week on something that was never meant for
anything but an omelette!”
Mrs. Wood never expected the chickens to hatch; but they did, every one
of them,—this is a true story,—and grew up to be exactly the kind of
chickens that one would expect from grocery-store eggs. They were none
of them brothers and sisters, or even distant cousins, and all seemed
like dreadfully ordinary fowls. But Franklin enjoyed them all the more,
because each one that came out was such a surprise. He rose at five
o’clock in the morning when the first was due, and stole downstairs in
his nightgown to feel under the hen. She responded with her usual angry
squawk, but at the same time he heard a little soft, sweet sound like
the note of a bird, and drew forth a mouse-colored ball of down that
looked at him confidingly out of round baby eyes.
“Say, you’re the fellow I came to meet!” Franklin said, setting the
thing on its tiny feet. And he mixed some corn-meal mush for it,
which Veatra ate up immediately. After breakfast there were two more
chickens, and before night the whole seven were cuddled under Veatra’s
wing.
“What’s that on the back of the stove?” asked Biddy the next morning,
as Eunice came into the kitchen.
“Oh, that’s my incubator with an egg in it. _I’m_ goin’ to have some
chickens, too.”
The incubator was an old candy box, stuffed with cotton and hung on top
of the range.
“Whin it hatches, you can have my bist bonnet to raise it in,” said
Biddy, disrespectfully. But she was never called upon to keep her
promise, for the egg baked hard on the next washing day, and Eunice ate
it.
Franklin set Hannah on some home-made eggs; but she used to leave them
to fly at the cats, and none of them hatched but an egg of Flossy’s,
which was named “Fairy Lilian.” She afterwards grew up to be an
enormous white rooster, with shaggy legs, and a great deal of manner.
When the warm weather came, the cats were fed in the yard, and as the
chickens were always escaping from their own quarters, there were many
pitched battles over the food. The hens stole things from the kittens,
and pecked them cruelly when they tried to interfere. Once Eunice saw
John Alden seize a whole mutton-chop bone, and hurry around the house
with it, followed by all the cats. It seemed too unfair, and Eunice
wrote a note to Franklin that day about it, in school.
DEAR FRANKLIN:—
I _hate_ your hens.
Your loving sister EUNICE.
But the next day something happened that cured John Alden forever of
imposing upon those weaker than himself. He noticed a strange cat
taking dinner with the others, and thought, “Ah, here’s the chance for
me! The natural shyness of this visitor will prevent him from resenting
any intrusion.” And, with a haughty stride, he landed in their midst.
The strange cat looked up, planted one paw firmly on the piece of fried
potato he was eating, and clawed out one of Johnny’s eyes.
The assault was so unexpected that Johnny could only stagger
one-sidedly away, and sit down in the drinking pan to recover his
balance. He knew that no hen could ever admire him again, and that the
slowest caterpillar would be able to evade his peck. It was terrible.
Fortunately Biddy had seen the attack from the window, and was able to
testify that none of the family cats had done it.
“It was a cat with a nose that dishgraced the Hivin he sat under,” she
said. “But, oh, the shplendid foight in him! He was loike a definder of
innocence.”
Eunice was sorry for Johnny, but felt that her cats had been avenged,
and stole out that evening to make friends with the defender of
innocence.
He was skulking under a neighbor’s barn, and peered out at her with
unfriendly, suspicious eyes set in scratched lids. Eunice had seen
“Thomas” cats before,—those with broad bland noses who sit out in
front of fish-shops and have self-respect,—but she had never met such
a cat as this.
“He doesn’t seem to like me,” she thought, feeling rather hurt. “Come,
poor kitty, kitty, and get some milk!”
But at this point the barn cat screwed up his torn nose with a
peculiarly threatening effect, and gave one long slow spit, most
terrible to hear and behold. Eunice dropped her saucer of milk and
fled. She had not supposed that she would ever live to hear a cat speak
to her like that.
He did not call on Weejums after this, excepting at night, when
everybody else was in bed; and Eunice wrote a song about him that she
and Kenneth used to sing as a duet. Sometimes one took the alto part,
and sometimes the other, but in any case the cat always fled. He told
Weejums that it was because it made him feel so hollow.
[Music
I hear the voice of a poor, poor
cat, His voice is thin as a thin, thin
slat. I fear his stom-ach is just like
that, An emp-ty place in the poor, poor cat.]
But one night Torn-nose relieved his emptiness by eating one of Veatra
Peck’s chickens.
“I’ll shoot that old barn cat, you see if I don’t!” Franklin said
furiously. But Mrs. Wood said that it would mean one less chicken
for her to chase. To tell the truth, she was getting rather tired
of them, for every day, while Franklin was at school, they caused
misunderstandings with the neighbors.
“If they’d only wait till he gets home,” she said; “but they commit all
their worst outrages in the morning.”
No sooner would she sit down to her sewing than there would come a
polite ring at the door-bell, and a certain Mr. Teechout would say,
“Pardon me, madam, but your fowls are trespassing on my strawberry
beds.”
And Mrs. Wood would apologize, and hasten forth to drive the fowls from
their unlawful picnic grounds. But she would scarcely have returned to
the sitting-room before there would be a thundering knock at the back
door, and she would hear Biddy’s voice raised in irate argument with
the woman across the alley. “You just tell your missus, if she don’t
keep them chickens out of my cabbages, I’ll _wring_ their necks!”
Then the poor “missus” would have to run out in the hot sun again, and
jump cabbages until her unruly brood had been persuaded to return.
“I couldn’t take but three cabbages in one leap at first,” she told
Franklin; “but now,” she added proudly, “I can do five!”
She knew that her son admired an athletic woman, and talked a great
deal among the boys about having the only mother who could drive a nail
straight. But when Franklin spoke of wanting a boat at the lake that
summer, she said that he could not possibly afford to have one unless
he sold his chickens.
“But, Mother, I’m not going to buy the whole boat! Our share will only
come to about thirteen dollars.”
“I don’t think we ought to afford even half a boat, unless you sell
the chickens. Nobody loves them anyhow. It isn’t as if they were ‛real
folks,’ like the cats.”
Franklin thought it over, and decided that, as he made no money from
his hens, it might be as well to get rid of them. It was true, also,
as his mother said, that nobody had loved them. But then they were not
in the least demonstrative themselves, and did not seem to require
affection. Indeed, their reserve amounted almost to coldness when any
advances were made. And in addition to this, they had once caused
Franklin to appear quite foolish in school.
He had kept a little diary of their doings, labelled “Plymouth Rock
Record,” and one day it happened to be on his desk when the principal
came by. She picked it up with much pride, thinking that here was a boy
who really loved his United States History, and, turning to the first
entry, read: “Priscilla laid a hard-boiled egg to-day.”
Franklin wondered why it was that she left the room so suddenly, but
suspected afterwards that she had been laughing at him.
“There’s something silly about hens,” he thought. “No matter what they
do, if you own them, you get drawn into it.”
He also told his mother that they were no good to photograph.
“You mean that they won’t pose?” she asked.
“Oh, it isn’t that! They’ll pose if you tie their legs. But they
haven’t any front view to their faces,—only a right and wrong side.”
A few days later when Mrs. Wood was coming up the street, she saw
people stop in front of her house, look down at their feet, and then
go off laughing. She hurried home, and found this sign tacked in the
middle of the sidewalk.
FOR SALE!
ONE LARGE, HANDSOME
PLYMOUTH-ROCK ROOSTER,
AND HIS FINE FAMILY OF LAYING HENS.
CHEAP! INQUIRE WITHIN.
_Also one pretty playful kitten—nice pet
for ladies and children—thrown in!_
Mrs. Wood took up the notice, and went in to tell Franklin that his
cousins, Mary and Wyman Bates, had offered to buy his hens. She had
been calling on their mother that afternoon, who said that the family
had decided to raise their own fresh eggs, and would be delighted to
begin with chickens who were, in a way, related to them.
So the next day Mary and Wyman came down with their man and a cart, and
took off most of the hens. John Alden did not go, because, at the last
minute, Franklin decided that he could not part with him, and Wyman
himself admitted that he would quite as soon have a rooster with the
usual number of eyes.
Eunice’s bantam Flossy also remained to keep Johnny company, and as he
was very fond of her, he never missed his other wives at all, or if he
did, he never mentioned it. And as Johnny had always been such a staid,
gentlemanly old bird, Mrs. Wood went to bed that night feeling that all
her troubles were over.
But she did not know him.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER EIGHT
A LOSS AND SOME GAINS
Bunny Grey had not been well since the time when the water came into
the cellar, and she afterwards developed a strange kind of bunny
“grip,” which made her most melancholy.
Franklin was too much absorbed in the sale of his chickens to pay her
much attention, and one morning was startled to find Kenneth tying a
black stocking on the cellar door.
“I told you she was worse,” Kenneth sniffed, and took Franklin down to
see her still form laid out in a grape-basket, with her hind legs tied
up with pink ribbon, and her head pillowed in parsley.
“Yes, but I thought she was getting better,” Franklin said. “She was
gaining flesh. Just see how round her stomach is!”
“Yes, but I did that,” Kenneth explained. “She was quite thin before I
began.”
“Began what?” asked Franklin, astonished.
“Blew her up with the bicycle pump. You see she had sniffles, and
couldn’t breathe from the outside, so I thought if she was full enough
of air, she could breathe from the inside. You don’t s’pose it hurt
her, do you?”
Franklin opened his mouth wrathfully, to tell Kenny what a cruel thing
he had done; but seeing how anxious the poor little red-eyed face had
become, said instead: “Well, I don’t believe it did her any _good_, so
I wouldn’t try it again, if I were you. But very likely she’d have died
anyway. You see she looks quite pale around the nose.”
Eunice and Kenneth had the funeral that afternoon, with Cyclone hitched
to the express cart. But it did not end well, because Cyclone got into
a fight with another dog, and smashed the cart, and some little street
children ran away with the grape-basket, thinking that Bun Grey’s
legs were asparagus. So none of the funeral returned but the two chief
mourners, who planted some potatoes in the grave that they had dug for
Bun Grey.
“You see ’t would be such a pity to waste that nice hole,” Eunice said.
“I’m glad it wasn’t Sam.”
Kenneth sniffed again, but said nothing, and Franklin admired him so
much for the way in which he bore his loss, that the next day he shook
some of his hen-money out of the red bank, and went down-town.
“More rabbits, I suppose,” Mrs. Wood thought patiently, as she began to
wrap up dishes to go to the lake.
But it was not rabbits this time, it was worse; and, as usual, it
was something that Mrs. Wood had never dreamed of telling him not to
get. Guinea-pigs had been discouraged, so they were not guinea-pigs
who greeted Kenneth from behind the wire of their little box at
breakfast the next morning. No, they were much smaller and more
slender, particularly as to tail, of which they possessed half a yard
apiece. And they were white and pink-eyed, with what Eunice called
“whittle-noses,” and, in other words, they were rats.
“You see they’ll be so handy to carry around,” Franklin said, with a
beaming smile. “They’re such small animals.”
And Kenneth’s joy was enough to make one forget even that they were
rats. His grief over Bun Grey faded, in the contemplation of those long
pink tails. And when he found that their owners would actually run up
his arm to his shoulder, and nip his ear, his delight was complete. It
was great fun, too, to watch them scramble up and down inside the wire
netting. One caught such strange views of their noses and chins.
“When you look _up_ at a rat’s chin, it’s weak,” Franklin said; “they
must have been made to be seen from above.”
Weejums left her two new little kittens, Mustard and Elijah, to come
and examine the latest arrivals. They were rats, she decided,—her
nose told her that much,—but so pale and peculiar! She wondered if
pink eyes would taste any better than black; but several smart cuffs on
the ears persuaded her that pink eyes were meant only to look at, so
she walked off very stiffly, and sat down “back-to.”
School was closed now, and Kenneth played with his new pets nearly all
the time. They grew so tame that he could put them down to run on the
floor, and catch them again quite easily.
But one day, before the family started for their cottage at the lake,
one of the rats disappeared.
“I think he’s got into the wall,” Kenneth said; “’cause I heard him
scratching round in there when I went to bed. Do you s’pose he’ll
starve to death, Mother? There won’t be much to eat after we go.”
But Mrs. Wood said that she did not think there was any danger of
Snowdrop’s starving, or even feeling hungry where he had gone,
because, although she never told the children, she knew where that
place was.
She and Biddy were sitting up late the night before, finishing
the packing, when they heard some one in the kitchen say, “O-ow,
yerr-or-wow-wow-O-wow!” and Mrs. Wood recognized the voice of her
tortoise-shell grandchild,—the reserved and haughty Weejums. She went
out to see what was the matter, and found the cat writhing in what
appeared to be agonies of stomach-ache. “So that’s where he went!” she
said, rubbing the last resting-place of Snowdrop with tender care.
Castor-oil and a hot-water bag followed, and the next day Weejums was
fit to travel. But as long as she lived, the sight of a white rat was
to her, what the memories of watermelon and strawberries are to certain
people after a sea-voyage.
Weejums travelled in a separate basket, with Mustard and Elijah, and as
a new home had been found for Minoose, there was only one other basket
of cats to go to the lake.
Minoose had gone to the principal of the children’s school,
accompanied by his plush mouse, and she had immediately become as
foolish over him as any one could have desired. Soon after leaving
home he sent a beautiful set of jewelry to Weejums—locket, chain, and
earrings—of the kind that comes mounted on a card at the toy-shops,
for twenty-five cents. Weejums looked lovely in the locket, but as her
ears had never been pierced, she was obliged to use the earrings as
tail clasps.
She wore them to the lake, and Clytie and Ivanhoe wore bright worsted
collars made on a “knitter,”—Ivanhoe’s red, and Clytie’s light blue.
Clytie, being fair, usually wore blue, although pale green was almost
equally becoming; and this being a great occasion, Ivanhoe was allowed
to wear his toy watch, and the glass lion’s-head stickpin that had come
in a penny prize package.
Cyclone and the cats always travelled with the family, but John Alden
and the rabbits had to go out on the load with the furniture.
“I couldn’t find a box high enough for Johnny to stand up in,” Franklin
said, as he brought in his tool chest. “Guess he’ll have to scooch this
trip.”
But the limberness of Johnny’s legs when he was turned loose at the
lake showed that the trip had not really injured him. The rabbits also
were allowed to run where they pleased, and gave delighted skips and
kicks through the fern. Weejums cast one glance at the carpenters who
were finishing some repairs in the house, and departed to the woods,
where she remained for three days. She had never cared for the society
of men, possibly because there were none in the family.
While she was away, Mustard and Elijah learned to eat fish, and spit
at her when she returned. They were orange-colored babies, with
corn-flower blue eyes, and looked like nice, warm muffins.
Every morning, Eunice and Kenneth fished off the dock, while Franklin
pulled around in his half of the boat, and put on airs. He never went
out very far unless some older person was with him, for both Mrs. Wood
and Mrs. Lane had suffered so much from anxiety over the boat, that
she was named the “Worry.” But Fred Lane came out from town every
night, and he and Franklin took wonderful rows in the sunset, sailing
with umbrellas, taking the swells from the steamers, and doing other
delightful and dangerous things.
[Illustration: “A NICE WARM MUFFIN”]
Weejums was dreadfully afraid of the water at first, and would run back
and forth in the road, howling, whenever the children went down to the
dock. She seemed to think there was small chance of ever seeing them
again. But when she found that fish came out of the water, her dislike
of it changed to warm affection. She would tease and coax until Eunice
went down to catch her a fish, and would begin eating it almost before
it was off the hook. The first fish she always finished herself, and
the next she took up to the kittens.
Sometimes, when the boat was tied to the dock, she would jump into it,
and sit placidly in the stern, enjoying the slight motion made by the
ripples, and apparently admiring the view. When the door of the locker
was left open, she would creep inside for a nap, and once or twice she
went rowing with the boys, before they discovered her presence.
Ivanhoe and Clytie preferred to play on land, and indulged in regular
gymnastic feats through the trees and shrubbery. Whenever Mrs. Wood
went anywhere in the evening, they both escorted her, and dashed out
from unexpected places with saucy tails, and whiskers stiff with
mischief. They liked to tease Cyclone, by making him think that they
were weasels and woodchucks, and they frightened people dreadfully who
passed the house at night. But the children’s interest in them and
their antics was soon lost in an event of greater importance.