WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
her moving away from the rest of his harem, 
he would run after her and hustle her back 
again ; therefore she used to wait her oppor- 
tunity to slip off when he was not looking. 
Some detail of Nature's machinery had surely 
been out of gear when she produced the Yellow 
Pullet. Something had lacked, and, to supple- 
ment it, she drew upon ancient plasm from 
some almost forgotten hoard. Therefore, with 
her partridge build and power of wing, some 
far-off ancestor, who lived in the jungle in the 
days before a Dorking was differentiated from 
a Brahmapootra, had bequeathed to the Yellow 
Pullet his love of deep covert, of lofty perches 
and of woodland fare, and his hatred of bare 
open country and the walled-roofed houses 
which men build. When the rest of the fowls 
squabbled round Mrs. Connell's petticoats for 
their morning meal, the Yellow Pullet lurked 
furtively at a distance, and only crept to the 
feast when all the rest had finished, and the 
yard was empty. Mrs. Connell had vainly 
tried to shut her up at night. Coercion only 
drove her cackling through the gate to the 
wood, where she could defy pursuit. Now that 
she was in the sixth month of her age and 
follies Mrs. Connell, despairing of her, had 
taken to reckoning her apart from the rest of 
the " Chickery-Cock's " seraglio : " Shure I 
182 
