OUR COUNTRY LIFE 



When our new black pets arrived they found, already 

 at home upon the estate, a yellow bantam rooster and 

 eight hens with feathered anklets, belonging to our 

 gardener's small boy. Never doubting that they would 

 be friends, we made no attempt to separate the birds. 

 But the black cock brooked no rival in the field; he 

 made that yellow rooster's life a misery and finally 

 killed him; then annexing his enemy's bewildered 

 harem he strutted triumphantly off to the woods. 



I arrived in the country rather late the next summer, 

 and it seemed to me that wherever I went within one or 

 two hundred feet of the chicken house, I would hear a 

 gentle scuttling and see a black bantam or a yellow ban- 

 tam or a mixed speckled bantam disappearing in the 

 underbrush, while a chorus of baby crowings mingled 

 with duckings and cheepings pervaded the evening 

 air. 



At dinner I asked, quite innocently, "How many ban- 

 tams have we now?" 



A curious look came into the face of the Constant 



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