nd. One of my
students sent in a pair of dainty blue slippers, fortunately too small,
as thus my conscience was clear in devoting them to the welfare of my
immediate brood; but I always had to see to it that Mike and Pat took
their siestas in separate slippers, where they would drowsily flute
away in musical rivalry. Cluxley, with her customary indiscretion,
bestowed herself one day in a damp rubber for her nap and caught a bad
cold, which we successfully doctored with hempseed.

Mike had begun to show signs of feathers and once he tried to crow. He
had become less dependent on me for intimate society, his attention
being much taken up with thwarting Pat's designs on the tidbits, but he
could by no means dispense with me as general protector. If I were in
the room, or close beside them in a steamer chair out of doors, he was
willing to ramble a bit with Pat and Cluxley, always taking the lead,
but I could not slip away and leave them, even in Mary's charge,
without immediate consternation, protest and pursuit on Microbe's part.
He was such a humanized chicken, coming at the call of his name, loving
to eat from the finger, cocking his little head so sagely when he was
addressed and politely cheeping a response, that he became perilously
attractive to the children of the neighborhood. Sturdy schoolboys would
kiss his yellow softness on the sly and we often had to rescue him from
the unskillful clutch of loving childish hands.

When a luncheon was brought to me out of doors, all three chickens
would come winging and scrabbling up the rug that wrapped the sorceress
of the steamer-chair and dispose themselves about the edge of the tray,
chirping continuous amens to the grace steeped in ancient witchcraft:

"Spread, table, spread.
Meat, drink and bread.
Ever may I have
What I ever crave,
When I am spread.
Meat for my black cock,
And meat for my red."

Now that I was to be seen outside the house with my little brood,
kindly neighbors came from all sides with offers of more chickens, but
my family cares were already heavy for a convalescent, and experience
had taught me that

"true happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice."

Occasional misgivings as to the future crossed my mind. I had often
seen reposing sheep blocking up the doorways of Andalusian
homes,--Easter lambs given, all gay with ribbons, to the childre