It's not very heavy
and I believe you can get it yourself, Mary Jane. Suppose you try."

Mary Jane was very glad to try. She hurried out the door into the
other room, spied the box over in the corner and dragged it back into
the little room where Grandmother was waiting.

"See, Grandmother?" she said proudly. "I can stand on it."

"So you can, so you can," agreed Grandmother much pleased. "You're a
good planner, little girl. Now turn the box on its long side, so; and
climb on it; then--"

"What's that noise?" exclaimed Mary Jane suddenly as through the quiet
of the little room she heard a queer, "Peep! Peep!" So many "peeps,"
so soft and low that she was hardly sure she heard them.

"Never mind!" cried Grandmother, who was looking into the big case that
Mary Jane had thought was a desk. "Climb up quickly and look!"

Mary Jane needed no second urging. She set the box on its long side
and, grasping her grandmother's hand firmly so it wouldn't tip over as
she stepped on it, she climbed up and looked into the "desk."

Such a sight as met her eyes! Tiny little chicks! Rows and rows and
rows of them! Under the glass cover of that queer looking case.

"They's about a million!" she gasped in amazement, "all in one box!"

"Not a million, dear," laughed Grandmother, "but a good many and
they're almost ready to take out."

"But how did they get in?" asked Mary Jane much puzzled.

Grandmother explained that the queer looking "desk" was really an
incubator--a box in which eggs were kept warm till the little creature
inside each egg was big enough to break the shell and take care of
itself.

Mary Jane looked and looked and looked and thought it was the most
wonderful of all the many wonders she had seen at Grandmother's. She
thought of a dozen questions she wanted to ask, but Grandmother seemed
so busy tending to this and that and the other that she decided to wait
till some other time to ask them.

"Now, dear," said Grandmother, "you stay here and be deciding which you
want for yours while I get your grandfather to help me take them out.
I was so in hopes you could see this, pet, because I knew you'd like
to."

She bustled out of the room in search of Grandfather, and Mary Jane
studied over the rows of chickens. And just at that minute she spied
_them_! She knew the second she saw them that there was her family.

They were huddled down in one corner, all six of them and they seemed
lonesome and--well