Fboto by Verne Morion 



A Story of Chickens and Stepmothers 



A. E. Yelever 

 S)a-acuse, N. Y. 



The story began when an indiscriminating hen laid an egg in a 

 duck nest. The first we knew about it, however, was when we 

 heard a doleful peeping out by the woodpile one rainy day. There 

 we found two creatures in distress — one, a wee chicken, cold, 

 bedraggled, hungry and lonely, — as disconsolate a little animal 

 as one ever saw, the other its first stepmother, a perplexed but 

 well-meaning duck which had done the best she knew for this 

 queer untimely child, as long as it would stay with her, but whose 

 sense of duty required her to stay on her nest when the chicken, 

 impelled by hunger left the shelter of her wings. She was plainly 

 relieved when we took away this strange foster child that didn't 

 like rain and that failed to understand her language. 



The motives which prompted us to interfere thus with the duck's 

 domestic affairs were not wholly altruisric. In fact, we wanted 



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