THE DAILY LIFE OF OUE FARM. 185 



had joined the Lucknow cock (a very handsome young 

 fellow, I can tell you, too), and was gone into the 

 fowl-house, deserting the poor little pheasants, as 

 our " Dandy " explained, with a pitiful elongation 

 of the word poor, that could be due only to his 

 remembrance of the tale of " the babes in the wood," 

 or some such sad recital. Of course, I was pulled, 

 nolens volens, to see, and there, sure enough, was one 

 young pheasant already missing, and the others kept 

 jumping off their perch, and wandering about with 

 most plaintive cries. The " naughty hen " was brought 

 back by a youngster, who braved the fleas of the 

 poultry-house, but all to no purpose. She deserted 

 them again the moment we had receded out of sight. 

 Later on, too, at the hour of retiring, to our consterna- 

 tion, we found not a single individual, hen or pheasants, 

 upon the perch, and so we gave them up as lost. In 

 the morning, however, they assembled by the window, 

 to be fed, but indulging in sad notes^ such as are appro- 

 priate to being first sent to a boarding-school from the 

 mother's lap, and since then they have found a roosting 

 place somewhere in the woods; coming about the house, 

 however, the day through. The young cocks' voices 

 are breaking fast (they were a late hatch, and are only 

 assuming their bright attire now), and it seems to me 

 that the hen could understand them no longer. Else 

 why be so spiteful to them as she now is, pecking them 

 away if ever they venture to approach and feed in the 

 stable yard ; whether it be that she thinks them great idle 

 things that ought now to be finding their own liveli- 

 hood, or that she is ashamed of owning such a gipsy 

 lot in the presence of gay chanticleer, for, of course, 

 in the recesses of her mind, she is ignorant how ever 



