CHAPTER IV.
{Dryshod warnings which are never heeded: p27.jpg} July 9th.
By the time the ducks and geese are incarcerated for the night, the reasonable, sensible, practical-minded hens--especially those whose mentality is increased and whose virtue is heightened by the responsibilities of motherhood--have gone into their own particular rat- proof boxes, where they are waiting in a semi-somnolent state to have the wire doors closed, the bricks set against them, and the bits of sacking flung over the tops to keep out the draught.

We have a great many young families, both ducklings and chicks, but we have no duck mothers at present.

The variety of bird which Phoebe seems to have bred during the past year may be called the New Duck, with certain radical ideas about woman's sphere.

What will happen to Thornycroft if we develop a New Hen and a New Cow, my imagination fails to conceive.

There does not seem to be the slightest danger for the moment, however, and our hens lay and sit and sit and lay as if laying and sitting were the twin purposes of life.
{The mother goes off to bed: p28.jpg} The nature of the hen seems to broaden with the duties of maternity, but I think myself that we presume a little upon her amiability and natural motherliness.