[Gutenberg 43697] • Nelly's First Schooldays

When the weather grew mild, Nelly was as good as her word about raising chickens for the benefit of Comfort’s nephew, the little slave. The eggs of the favorite hen were carefully put aside to accumulate, and as soon as she had done laying, and went about the barnyard clucking, with her feathers ruffled and her wings drooping, Nelly knew, with joy, that it was time to set her. So she filled the same nest in which the eggs had been laid, with clean, fresh straw, and placed them in it, ready for the bantam when Martin could catch her to put her on. They found that the hen needed no coaxing, but settled herself at once in the well-filled nest, giving at the same time an occasional cluck of high satisfaction. In three weeks from that time she came off with eleven chicks,—all safe and well. When she was put in her coop, under the big apple-tree by the fence, Nelly fed her with moistened Indian meal, every day. She thought it a pretty sight, when biddy minced up the food for her babies, and taught them how to drink out of the flower-pot saucer of water that stood within her reach.

Nelly seemed never to get tired of looking at her little snow-white pets. She felt that they were her own, and therefore she took a double interest in them.

When she was home from school, and lessons were studied for the next morning, she would go out to the apple-tree, and sit on the clean grass an hour or two, to watch every movement of the brood, and the solicitude of the caged mother when her offspring wandered too far away. One day in particular, as she sat there, the child’s thoughts were busy with the future; her imagination pictured the time when full-grown, and more beautiful than any others, as she thought they were sure to become, her eleven chickens were to be sent to market.

“I hope,” she said half aloud; “I hope they will bring a good price, for Comfort’s sake; I should not like to offer her anything less than five dollars. That is very little, I think, compared to all the trouble I have had night and morning to feed and take care of them.”

She stopped a moment, and heaved a deep sigh, as she saw the little yellow dots flit back and forth through the long grass, some of them running now and then to nestle lovingly under the wings of the mother.