766 THE AMERICAN-tiCANDINA VIAN REVIEW 
to indicate Pernilla and her progeny, together with Stina and Stina’s 
half-grown girl. 
As Mother Malena was large and sturdy, with fists that harmo¬ 
nized strongly with her verbal expression, it followed that the hen 
kept her place, which was in a corner of her mistress’s bed, at the foot, 
where she had her accommodations in the bed straw. There she might 
sit on the days when she was to lay, having burrowed herself in so that 
she was hardly visible, blinking with her wide-open eyes, now and then 
staling at some object on the quilt, dropping her beak and picking up 
w la ^ s ^ e c °uld find—all with the most profound seriousness that a hen 
could properly possess. In between times she paraded about on the 
floor, nodding her head at every step; cackled sotto voce, not without 
a sentimental tone, probably from the feeling of being alone and mis¬ 
understood; then suddenly let out and began to scratch with her 
strong, gray-scaled legs in both directions with a superior skill that 
showed she was of good extraction. 
But Pernilla had a boy, a tow-headed, unkempt youngster with 
a thin neck, dressed in an old outgrown jacket which did not come 
dovn far enough, and a pair of slippery moleskin trousers which had 
been cut off to fit him but whose upper part was of a size for a grown 
man. This promising adolescent seldom stuck his nose round the 
corner of the house, because he inevitably roused the delight of the 
public by the upper part of his trousers, and he did not care for pub¬ 
licity. He was too delicate-minded for such a thing. Let it not be 
said, however, that he was lacking in talent, for on the contrary he 
possessed a gift quite eminent in its way—and it was, too, the only one 
he possessed: he could mimic the hen. He took his place in the middle 
of the floor, and whatever the hen did he did after her. In especial he 
had mastered the faculty of scratching. 
He had a pair of long shoes, dry from lack of grease, and with 
bioad, split toes where his own would have peeped out if they had been 
long enough. It was with these shoes that he scratched. It was a 
miracle that they stood it, but they did. When he stuffed his hands 
into his formless trousers’ pockets, swung his body and scraped the 
floor with his long flippers, there came into his very expression and 
the sti etching of his neck something which in a strikingly shameless 
manner resembled the hen. Furthermore, when she moulted and had 
no erect tail-feathers, it came about that even his figure had a likeness 
to hers. However it was, he could make the other youngsters double 
up with laughter, perhaps not only at his efforts but even more be¬ 
cause of the vexation they believed they could rouse in the hen’s owner. 
She ga\ e him only her silent disdain, but with hate in her inmost heart. 
It is possible, though, that what Mother Malena took as insult was 
nothing but his instinctive youthful joy of life or a guileless form of 
pastime. 
