Part 5

These cares all mothers have, but the Turkey mothers have another care which is really very hard to stand, for the Gobblers do not like their children and will try in every way to prevent the eggs from hatching. If a Gobbler sees one of the Hen Turkeys laying an egg, he will break the egg, and if he meets a flock of tiny Turkey Chicks he will peck and hurt, perhaps even kill, all that he can of them. That is why the Hen Turkeys on the farm had always been in the habit of stealing away to lay their eggs in some secret place. One had even raised a fine brood in the middle of a nettle-patch the year before. She had slipped away from her friends and from the Gobbler day after day until she had laid thirteen eggs, and then had begun sitting. She had to sit as long as the Ducks do, and that is for twenty-eight days. You can imagine how tired she became, and how many times she had kept very still, hardly daring to move a feather, because she heard the Gobbler near and feared he would find and break her precious eggs.

Now she began to feel like laying, and walked off to the nettle-patch once more. She thought that having had such good luck there before was a reason for trying it again. She had hardly laid her fine large egg there when the Man came softly along and picked her up by the legs. She flapped her wings and craned her head as far upwards as she could, yet he did not loosen his hold on her. He carried her carefully, but he carried her just the same.

When he reached the poultry-house, he put her in a pen by herself. Then he went off to the farmhouse with her newly laid egg in his pocket. You can imagine how sad she felt. If there is one thing that a Hen Turkey likes better than taking long walks, it is raising Turkey Chicks. In spite of the weariness and the anxiety, she is very fond of it. And now this one found herself shut in and without her egg. It is true that, besides the pen, she could go into the scratching-shed and the big yard, yet even then there was the wired netting between her and the great world, and her friends were on the other side of the fence. She was just wondering if she could not fly over the fence and be free, when the Man returned and cut some of the long feathers from her right wing. Then she knew that she could not fly at all.

The Man next made a fine nest of hay in a good-sized box, placing it in the shed and putting an egg into it. The Hen Turkey first thought that it was her own egg, but when the Man left and she could come nearer, she found that it was not. Instead, it was different from any she had ever seen. She tried sitting on it. "It feels all right," she said in her gentle and plaintive voice. "If I am still here when I want to lay another, I will use this nest."

In spite of her loneliness and sadness, the Hen Turkey managed to keep brave during the days that followed. The Man gave her plenty of good corn and clean water, and she had many visits with the Hens and their Chickens who lived in the pen next to hers and ran about all day in their yard. Of course she did not think them so interesting as Turkey Chicks, yet she liked to watch them and visit with them between the wires. It made her want a brood of her own even more than ever.

She still laid eggs right along, and the Man took each away soon after it was laid. She feared that he took them to eat, but the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen said that he might be giving them to the table to hatch, and that she should not worry. "I had just such a time myself," she added, "and it all came out right. You see if he does not bring you some fine Turkey Chicks soon."

This always cheered the Hen Turkey for a time, but even if it were to be so, she thought, she would prefer to hatch her own eggs. She did not know that the Man had every one of hers in a basket in a dry, warm place in the house, and was turning each over carefully every day. This he did to keep them in the best possible way until there should be a nestful for her to sit on.

Sometimes the Gobbler and the two other Hen Turkeys came up to the fence to visit with her. They never stayed long, because they came of a restless and wandering family, yet it did her good to have chats with them, even if they walked back and forth part of the time as they talked. The Gobbler paid very little attention to her. He told her once that the Hen Turkeys who were foolish enough to try to raise broods deserved to be shut up and have their wings clipped. She had better visits with her sisters when he was not there to listen. One of them told her that she had several eggs hidden under a sumach bush in a fence corner. The other said that she was trying to decide on a nesting-place; she couldn't choose between a corner of the lower meadow and the edge of the woods. Both of them spoke very softly, and frequently looked over toward where the Gobbler was strutting in the sunshine. They were much afraid that he would hear.

When her sisters walked away, the Hen Turkey in the yard felt sadder than ever. She strolled back into the shed and tried to think of something pleasant to do. She had not laid an egg for two days, and she was very lonely. You can imagine how pleased and happy she was to see eleven fine Turkey eggs lying in her nest. The queer egg which she had not laid was gone, and she felt certain that those there were all her own. She got on the nest at once, and found that she could exactly cover them. "How lucky!" she thought. "If there were another one it would be too many and I could not keep it warm."

She did not know she had laid fifteen eggs, and that the Man had taken the other four down cellar to be hatched by the incubator. She thought it just luck that there were precisely enough. She did not know the Man had read in one of his books that a Hen Turkey can safely cover only eleven eggs. There are several things better than luck, you see. Willingness to study is one and willingness to work is another. This Man had both kinds of willingness, and it was well for his poultry that he had.

There is not much to be told about the days that passed before the first Turkey Chick chipped the shell. The sun shone into the open front of the shed for twenty-eight days, and the patient Hen Turkey was there, sitting on her nest. The moon shone into the shed for many nights, and she was still there. The moon could not shine in for twenty-eight nights for two reasons. Sometimes it set too early, and sometimes the nights were cloudy and wet, although none of the days were.

When it rained the Turkey was the happiest. She did not like wet weather at all. It was for this reason she was happy. Every shower reminded her how wet it must be out in the nettle-patch, and made her think how cosy and happy she was in the place which the Man had made ready for her.

Then came the joyous day on which ten little Turkey Chicks chipped the shell. They were very promising children, quite the finest, their mother thought, that she had ever seen. There was only one sad thing about the day, and that was not having the eleventh egg hatch. The Turkey Hen was too happy with her ten children to spend much time in thinking of the other which she had hoped to have, but she could not help remembering once in a while, and then she became very sad.

It was not until the next morning that the ten little ones began to eat and to run around. Young Turkeys do not eat at all the first day, you know, but they always make up for it afterwards.

When the Hen Turkey walked out of the shed with her family, the Hens in the next yard crowded to the fence to see them. The little White Plymouth Rocks could not understand for a long time why the Turkey Chicks should be so large. "It isn't fair," they said. "Those Turkey Chicks will be grown up long before we are!" They thought that to be grown up was the finest thing in the world.

The Hens were very friendly and chatted long about them, telling the fond mother how very slender their necks were and how neat their little feet looked, with the tiny webs coming half-way to the tips of their toes. "I am very glad for you," said the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen. "I was sure that it would all come out right in the end. This Man takes excellent care of his poultry."

After a while the Gobbler came strutting past. When he saw his children, he stood his feathers on end and dragged his wings on the ground. He was exceedingly angry, and would have liked it very well if they had been on his side of the fence.

"Ugly little things!" he said to their mother. "They will tag around after you all the rest of the summer."

"Very well," she replied. "I shall like to have them."

"Silly--silly--silly!" said the Gobbler, as he strutted off.

The Hen Turkey's sisters came walking slowly toward her. Both of them were sitting on eggs, and had left their nests for a few minutes to find food. Of course they could not make a long call. "I built in the edge of the woods after all," said the one who had been so undecided. "I wanted you to know, but don't tell anybody else, or the Gobbler may hear of it and find the nest." Then she spoke of the ten Turkey Chicks and asked the other sister to notice how much they looked like their mother. After that they had to hurry back to their nests.

When the Hen Turkey called her Chicks to cuddle down for the night, she found four already in the shed, eating from the food-dish.

"I thought you were all outside with me," she remarked. "Why did you come in here?"

"We couldn't help ourselves," said they. "Some very large creature brought us here just now. We came from a darker place than this."

The mother was very much puzzled. She knew that she had not hatched them, and that they could not belong to her sisters, who had begun sitting after she did. There was no way of taking them to any other place for the night, so she decided to do the kind thing and care for them herself. She was quite right in this. One is never sorry for having done the kind thing, you know, but one is very often sorry for having done the unkind thing. "Crawl right under my wings," said she, "and cuddle down with these other Turkey Chicks. I will try to cover you all."

She managed very well and the night was warm, so that although a few of the Chicks were not wholly covered all the time, they got along very comfortably indeed. By the next morning the mother loved the four as much as she did her own ten. "It really doesn't matter in the least who hatched them," she said, "or even who laid the eggs. They need a mother and I can love them all. It would be a shame if I couldn't stretch my wings a little more for the sake of covering them." She never knew that they had been hatched in the incubator from the four eggs which she had laid, but which the Man had thought she could not cover. You see she was really adopting her own children without knowing it.

Turkey mothers are hungry creatures, and do not understand that they should not eat the hard-boiled eggs which are the best food for their Chicks when very small. So the Man had either to shut this mother in the shed and place the food for the Chicks outside, where she could not reach it, or else find some other way of keeping it from her. He thought a Turkey who had sat so closely on her nest for four weeks should be allowed to stretch, so he put the food for the children in a coop and left the mother free. The little ones could run in and out whenever they wanted to eat, and the mother had plenty of corn and water outside, so they were all well cared for and happy. The Gobbler said unkind things to them each time he passed, but they were too happy and sensible to mind that very much, and it did not seem long before the Chicks' tail-and wing-feathers were showing through their down, and they were given porridge and milk instead of hard-boiled egg. This made them feel that they were growing up very fast indeed, and they kept stretching their tiny wings and looking around at their funny little tails to watch their feathers lengthen.

On the day when they had their first porridge, their aunts and their newly hatched cousins were brought in to share their yard with them. You can imagine what happy times they all had, playing together and visiting through the wire fence with their next-door neighbors, the White Plymouth Rock Chickens.

The Gobbler used to pass by and try to make them and their mothers unhappy by telling them of the pleasure they missed by being shut up. "There is fine food in the lower meadow," he said, "and the upper one is even better. There are delicious Bugs to be found by the side of the road. But these are for me, and not for silly Hen Turkeys and their good-for-nothing Chicks."

One day the outer gate of the empty yard next to theirs was left open and some fine corn strewn inside, just as the Gobbler came along. He strutted in to eat the corn, thinking a little of it would taste good before he started for the meadow.

He stood with his back to the gate while eating, and quite often he stopped between mouthfuls to tell the Hen Turkeys how fine it was outside. Soon he noticed the Man opening the gate of their yard and letting the oldest flock pass through with their mother. He took one hurried last mouthful and turned to leave. The gate of his yard was shut, and he was too fat and old to fly over the fence.

The happy Turkey mother paused on her way to the meadows with her flock. She was a very patient creature, and would never have dared say anything of the sort to the Gobbler when he was free, but now she decided to say what she wished for once. "Thank you very much for telling us about the fine food outside," said she. "We shall soon be enjoying it. We shall first try the lower meadow and then the upper one. After that we shall hunt for those delicious Bugs which you say may be found by the roadside. Probably we shall find plenty of dandelion, cress, and mustard leaves, with a few Ants or nettles to give flavor. It is really very fine outside."

THREE CHICKENS RUN AWAY

One would think that with such a good mother as the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen, Chickens should have been contented to mind her and follow wherever she went, and usually hers did. One day, however, two of the brothers coaxed their good little sister to go with them to visit the Chickens at the farm across the road. The brothers had teased and teased their mother to let them go there, but she had always refused.

"Why?" they said.

"Because," answered the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen, "you have enough room and enough playmates right here at home, and I know that you are safe and well here. I do not know what might happen to you there."

"Oh, _why_ can't we go?" teased the brothers, who had just been given an answer to that same question, and were very rude to keep on asking it.

Of course the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen had had too much experience with Chickens to reply again to a question which should not have been asked the second time, and might better not have been asked the first. So she just turned her back and walked off, clucking to her brood as she went. The brothers who had been teasing did not like that at all, and they put their naughty little heads together and decided to run away.

"Let's get Little Sister to go along," said Older Brother.

"Why?" asked Younger Brother. "She can't run as fast as we can, and she's so good that it wouldn't be much fun anyway. We wouldn't get across the road before she'd want to come back and be afraid our mother would worry about us."

"That is just why I want her to go along," said Older Brother. "We'll get her to go, and then our mother will think that we are not any worse than she is, and perhaps she won't peck us so hard when we get back."

"All right," said Younger Brother, fluttering his wings with impatience. "Let's get her right now. I know our mother won't scold her."

You see both of the brothers forgot that the reason why their mother had never scolded Little Sister was that Little Sister had never done anything wrong. She was really the best Chicken in the brood, and she had such a sweet way of running to the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen during the day and cuddling close to her for a short rest, that it was not strange her mother was especially fond of her.

Now the two naughty brothers found Little Sister and began talking to her. "Ever been across the road?" asked Older Brother, carelessly, as he snapped off a blade of grass.

"No," said Little Sister. "Mother never goes."

"There are some very jolly Chickens on that farm," remarked Younger Brother. "One of them asked us to come over a little while ago."

"Wouldn't it be fun!" exclaimed Little Sister. "Let's ask Mother if we can't all go."

"Aw, they won't want the whole brood at once," said Older Brother. "Besides, our mother is way over in the edge of the pasture now, and there isn't any use in bothering her. I tell you what let's do. Let's just go down to our side of the road and see if those other Chickens are there now. Then we can ask them if they don't want us to come over some other day."

You see the brothers knew that it would never do to ask their sister to run away with them at first, for she would have said "No," and run off to tell the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen, and that would have spoiled all their naughty fun.

The three little White Plymouth Rocks put down their heads and scurried along as fast as they could toward the road. Older Brother planned it so that the fence should hide them from their mother as they ran, but he said nothing of this to Little Sister, for she was not used to being naughty, and he knew that he would have to go about it very carefully to get her to run away. When they reached the road they saw the Chickens on the other side, but they were well within their own farm-yard.

"Oh, isn't that too bad!" exclaimed Little Sister. "Now you can't ask them what you wanted to."

"We might run over and speak to them about it now," said Younger Brother. "Mother won't care. After we have come so far to see them, it seems too bad to miss our chance. Come on and we can be across before that team gets here." Both the brothers put down their heads and ran as fast as they could, and Little Sister followed after them. When they were on the other side she began to cry and wanted to go back.

"I n-n-never did such a thing in all my l-l-life," she sobbed, "and I know our mother won't like it. Let's go right back."

"Oh, don't act like a Gosling," said Older Brother. "You're over here now and you might as well have a good time. What if our mother does scold when we get back? She never wants us to have a bit of fun, and we're just as safe here as we were at home."

Little Sister did not feel at all happy, still, you know how hard it is to stop being naughty when you have once begun, and she found it hard. She would gladly have returned at once if her brothers had been willing to go with her, but when she found that they were going to stay, she stayed with them. The Chickens whom they were visiting were very jolly and full of fun, although they were of common families and had not been carefully brought up. They did many things which the little White Plymouth Rocks had never been allowed to do, and in a short time the visitors were doing just the same as they.

These Chickens even made fun of each other when they had accidents, and Little Sister heard them laughing at three or four who were acting as though they were sick and opening their bills very wide. "What is the matter with those Chickens?" she asked.

"Oh, they have the gapes," answered one of the Chickens who lived there, and then he began speaking of something else.

It is very sad to have to tell such a thing, but the truth is that the three White Plymouth Rock Chickens did not return to their home until nearly roosting-time. Even Little Sister pecked and squabbled and acted like the rest. They walked up the tongue of a hay wagon that stood in the yard, and scrambled and fluttered until they were on the edge of the rack. "Dare you to fly down into the old hen-yard," said one of the Chickens who lived on the place. "We used to live in there until a few days ago, and then the Farmer turned us out and shut the gate after us."

"Why did he do that?" asked Older Brother.

"I don't know," was the answer. "Nobody knows why Farmers do things. I think he did it just to be mean. There were fine Angleworms in there, and now we can't get one of them. Dare you to fly down there! You can get out somehow."

Older Brother was not brave enough to refuse, so over he flew, and Younger Brother came after him. The other Chickens fluttered along with them and Younger Brother gave Little Sister a shove that sent her over the fence when he went. They found a great many Angleworms there, and ate and ate and ate, and tried to get the largest ones away from each other; but after a while the Farmer's Wife saw them and came running to shoo them out with her apron. Little Sister was really glad when this happened, for she had found no place where she could crawl through the fence. She would have told her brothers about it if she had not feared that they would laugh at her and call her a coward. She did not know that each of them was thinking the same thing and dared not speak of it for the same reason. Of course the Chickens who lived on that farm all the time did not care so much. Naughty Chickens, like the three little run-aways, are almost sure to think about their mothers when the sun begins to set and the shadows on the grass grow long. Then they begin to think about home, too, and wish that they did not have to be ashamed of themselves.

When these brothers and their sister got out of the hen-yard, they started straight for home. At first they ran, and quite fast too, but as they got nearer they began to go more slowly, and once in a while one of them would stop to peck at something or other. You see they were thinking of what the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen would be likely to say to them. They thought that they would find her in the old coop where they had lived when first hatched. They ran the fields now, yet always went back there to spend the nights.

They were trying so hard to find excuses for themselves that they did not notice the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen behind the stone-pile in the lane. She had got the rest of her brood settled in the coop for the night and then started out in search of the wanderers. As soon as they passed the stone-pile, she ducked her head and ran after them as fast as she could, dragging the tips of her wings on the ground and pecking at them hard and fast. You should have seen them run. They fluttered their wings wildly and never thought of making excuses. The one thing they remembered was that if they only reached the coop they could crawl in under their good brothers and sisters and be safe from their mother's bill.

Little Sister got punished as well as her brothers, and that was perfectly right. For she need not have gone with them, even if they did ask her. It may be that her mother did not peck her quite so hard as she did the others, but it was hard enough to make her glad to reach the coop at last. The good Chickens were almost asleep when these three dived in under them, and it took some time for them all to get settled again. The Barred Plymouth Rock Hen sat down beside the pile of her children and looked very hot and severe, yet she did not scold them then.

The rest of the brood were sound asleep when Little Sister slipped out from under them to cuddle close to her mother. She could not sleep until she had confessed it all, and that shows that she was a good Chicken at heart. When she told about their getting into the closed hen-yard, and how they had been driven out of it, the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen looked very much startled. "Did any of your playmates over there go around with their mouths open?" said she.