r came in one morning, wagging her tail. She had had
her puppies, and she now took us to where they were housed, in between
the floor of a building and the hollow ground. Em'ly was seated on the
whole litter.

"No," I said to the Judge, "I am not surprised. She is capable of
anything."

In her new choice of offspring, this hen had at length encountered an
unworthy parent. The setter was bored by her own puppies. She found the
hole under the house an obscure and monotonous residence compared with
the dining room, and our company more stimulating and sympathetic than
that of her children. A much-petted contact with our superior race had
developed her dog intelligence above its natural level, and turned her
into an unnatural, neglectful mother, who was constantly forgetting her
nursery for worldly pleasures.

At certain periods of the day she repaired to the puppies and fed them,
but came away when this perfunctory ceremony was accomplished; and she
was glad enough to have a governess bring them up. She made no quarrel
with Em'ly, and the two understood each other perfectly. I have never
seen among animals any arrangement so civilized and so perverted.
It made Em'ly perfectly happy. To see her sitting all day jealously
spreading her wings over some blind puppies was sufficiently curious;
but when they became large enough to come out from under the house and
toddle about in the proud hen's wake, I longed for some distinguished
naturalist. I felt that our ignorance made us inappropriate spectators
of such a phenomenon. Em'ly scratched and clucked, and the puppies ran
to her, pawed her with their fat limp little legs, and retreated beneath
her feathers in their games of hide and seek. Conceive, if you can, what
confusion must have reigned in their infant minds as to who the setter
was!

"I reckon they think she's the wet-nurse," said the Virginian.

When the puppies grew to be boisterous, I perceived that Em'ly's
mission was approaching its end. They were too heavy for her, and their
increasing scope of playfulness was not in her line. Once or twice they
knocked her over, upon which she arose and pecked them severely, and
they retired to a safe distance, and sitting in a circle, yapped at
her. I think they began to suspect that she was only a hen after all.
So Em'ly resigned with an indifference which surprised me, until I
remembered that if it had been chickens, she would have ceased to look
after them by this time.