go and take a walk around the block, because she hadn't time
to leave her business, and if she didn't attend to it they would have a
lot of spoiled eggs on their hand, and no family to bring up. He would
scold, and seem to tell her that it was all foolishness, that for his
part he didn't want to hear a lot of chickens squawking around. He
would seem to argue with her that a brood of chickens would be a dead
give-away on them both, and they would be at once classed as old folks,
while if they were alone in the world they would be spring chickens, and
could go in young society, but the hen would scold back, and tell him
he ought to be ashamed of himself to talk that way, and he would go off
mad, and sulk around a spell, and then go to a neighbor's hen-house
and sometimes he wouldn't come back till the next day. The hen would be
sorry she had spoken so cross, and would seem pained at his going away
and would look anxiously for his return, and when he came back after
being out in the rain all night, she would be solicitious after his
health, and tell him he ought to wrap something around him, but he acted
as though he didn't care for his health, and he would go out again
and get chilled through. Finally the hen come off the nest with ten
chickens, and the rooster seemed very proud, and when anybody came out
to have a look at them he would crow, and seemed to say they were all
his chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching them, and if it
had been him that was setting on them he could have hatched them out in
a week, or died a trying. But the exposure told on him, and he went into
a decline, and one morning we found him dead. Do you know, I never see
a hen that seemed to realize a calamity as she did. She looked pale,
and her eyes looked red, and she seemed to be utterly crushed. If the
chickens, which were so young they could not realize that they were
little orphans, became noisy, and got to pulling and hauling over a
worm, and conducted themselves in an unseemly manner, she would talk to
them in hen language, with tears in her eyes, and it was a picture of
woe. But the next day a neighboring rooster got to looking through the
fence from the alley, and trying to flirt with her. At first she was
indignant, and seemed to tell him he ought to go about his business, and
leave her alone, but the dude kept clucking, and pretty soon the widowed
hen edged up towards the fence, and asked him to come in, but the hole
in the fe