ed Mother Dear and Anna-Margaret ate her
breakfast in silence. Then kissing her mother in a matter of fact way,
she went out to play with her sisters.

"Ah, here comes Anna-Margaret to knock down our things," moaned Edith.

"Let her come on," cried Ruth, "and we'll go down in the bottom and
build sand forts; it rained yesterday and the sand is nice and damp."

"Oh-oo, let's," echoed Edith, and off they scampered. Anna-Margaret saw
them and started after them as fast as her little chubby brown legs
could carry her, which wasn't very fast. The other children were far in
front of her. Anna-Margaret stopped suddenly,--she heard a little biddie
in distress. There was a mother hen darting through the grass after a
fleeing grasshopper, and close behind her was the whole flock save one.
Anna-Margaret watched them as the young chickens spread open their wings
and hurried in pursuit of their mother. Far behind one little black,
fuzzy biddie struggled and tripped over the tall grass stems. The baby
looked at the little chick and then at the other ones and saw that they
were different. She didn't know what the difference was. She could not
understand that the other chickens were several days older and that this
one had only been taken away from its own mother hen that morning in
order that she would remain on her nest until all her chicks were
hatched. All Anna-Margaret knew was that they were different.

"Poor l'll biddie, dey don't want you to play wif them," she
sympathized, "come, come to Anna-Margaret."

With little difficulty she captured the young chick and started back to
the house.

"Dat's all 'ight, I know what I'm gonna do," she decided, "I'm gonna
play Dod. Poor l'll biddie, just wait, Anna-Margaret'll fix yo', so you
can run and fly and keep up with the biddies. Won't dat be nice, uh?"
And she put her curly head down close to the little chick as if to catch
its answer.

Anna-Margaret went straight to the big sewing-basket and placing the
biddie on the machine extracted a threaded needle. Cutting two small
pieces of black cloth for wings, she took the chick and seated herself
on the drop-step between the sewing-room and dining-room. She then
attempted to sew one of the little black pieces of cloth to one of the
tiny wings of the young chick.

[Illustration]

"There, there, yo'll be all 'ight in dest a minute," she said amid the
distressful chirping of the chick. The biddie's cries brought Mother
Dear to the s