THE AMERI CAN-SC AN DIN AVIAN REVIEW 
767 
He, meanwhile, made capital of all the hen’s little weaknesses 
and ridiculed them. At times she would give a quite inept cackle and 
begin to run around the room in a foolish way which really was hardly 
suited to a worthy old matron of a hen. The urchin could imitate this 
with finished mastery, running about like mad in his half of the room 
and uttering loud shrieks. 
But there is no perfection without its shortcomings, and in spite 
of her good qualities the hen had one real defect of character to which 
not even Mother Malena could shut her eyes. This was a most frivo¬ 
lous passion for society. When she was let out on sunny days—and it 
was necessary that she should get to roll in the sand and pick up 
worms; her health demanded it, and otherwise the purchasers com¬ 
plained that her eggs were too white—she needed but to hear the 
chickens’ cackle and the cock’s crow in Nils Matson’s yard, for her to 
forget duty and gratitude for her support, and to creep through the 
first good hole in the fence and vanish till somebody fetched her. 
It was no pleasant task to go into Nils Matson’s yard and de¬ 
mand one’s property. Nils Matson was an old childless widower, 
cross as a chained dog and stingy as a wolf. Every time Mother 
Malena came to fetch her pet he consoled her by shouting loudly that 
the next time he’d “knock the arms and legs off the d- beast.” 
That was his regular threat against Pernilla’s youngsters, who along 
with other children stole his apples, and he could not make any change 
in his wording on account of a hen. He always said beast, wishing 
thereby to indicate the greedy and coarse nature of the said hen. She 
was a monster that he ought to put an end to. 
One day in the late autumn, just as he stood scattering corn for 
his own chickens, he saw Mother Malena’s hen come running into the 
yard, happy and sociable, mingling with the flock as if she belonged 
there. Anger rose in his breast with such violence as almost to stifle 
him. He picked up a stone and threw it viciously at the hen. The 
flock dispersed, shrieking, but instead of getting off home Mother 
Malena’s hen ran to the feeding trough. That was an unheard-of 
impudence. Nils Matson flung another stone, bigger than the first, 
after the fleeing bird. 
It struck her. 
Now it was a peculiarity of Nils Matson that he could be as nasty 
as possible to human beings, but towards animals he was extremely 
tender. If it was only a beetle which had fallen on its back and was 
clutching at the air with its thin legs, he had to lean down with a long, 
groaning “Oh!” and help it to its feet again with his stiff dexter finger. 
When this time he threw at the hen, he had Mother Malena in his 
mind; but when he hit her, she was nothing but a misused animal. It 
had all been the work of an instant, and before he could do anything 
about it, the hen, flapping her wings and with her broken leg dangling 
