A Place in the Country

By Ruby Scranton Jones

(Previous story)

Story 4: The Chickens

When the dishes were done, Ellen Martin brought a basket of apricots from the root cellar and sat down by the open kitchen window to pit them. It was so wonderful, she thought, to have your own fruit to put up. It had been too expensive in the city and, anyway, there had been no place in the apartment to keep bottled fruit. This winter the children were going to have all they could eat.

Just then Betty came in to ask, “There’s no more wheat, Mother, what shall I feed the chickens?”

“Are you sure?” Ellen asked in surprise. “Daddy said he brought enough for a week and we’ve had them only five days.”

She put aside the apricots and hurried to the garage with Betty. The sack was empty.

“We must have been feeding them too much,” she decided. “Daddy will have to get more feed tomorrow, but what can we give them today?” She looked around. There was fruit under every tree and every step she took disturbed swarms of grasshoppers.

“I know,” she said, “we’ll let them out. They must know their home by this time. The lazy things can get their own food.” She opened the run gate, and the eight hens filed out.

Johnny and the puppy came running from around the house, and the hens scattered, cackling, all over the place.

“Tie “Curtains’ up, Betty,” Ellen called as she ran after the hens and shooed them back towards their pen with her apron.

When they had first let the hens out of the crate, the same thing had happened. It was then that John had given the puppy his name. He had picked him up and said, “Here, ‘Curtains,’ let them alone. They have just as much right here as you have, even if they didn’t cost so much.”

The children had laughed and danced around their father and the puppy saying, “‘Curtains!’ ‘Curtains!’ Let me have ‘Curtains,’” and that had bene his name ever since.

Ellen stood watching the hens for a while. They seemed busy and contented, so she said to Betty. “You and Johnny stay here in the shade and watch them. I must get back to work.”

The fire in the range had gone out so Ellen made it up again and put the jar sin a kettle to boil. The heat was soon almost unbearable in the little kitchen, so she moved her chair between the door and window to get any little breeze there was. once she looked out. The hens were still eating and the children were sitting under the tree.

She began to wonder if she had been wise to ask John to get the hens. They had cost him almost two days’ work and grain was expensive. She had hoped to save buying eggs and maybe have some eggs to sell. So far the eight hens had averaged six eggs a day. If each of the family ate one a day and she made one cake a week, there would be only a dozen to sell. That would hardly pay for their feed.

She took the jars out of the boiling water and put them on a wet cloth on the table. Then she filled the stove with coal and put the apricots on to cook. As she measured out the sugar she began to worry about the first monthly payment due in ten days. She had barely half enough in the candy box behind the mush cartons. She would have to convince John that she could pick all the fruit herself. He seemed to have no trouble finding jobs and if he worked every day they might get enough.

She was startled out of her musing by a loud cackling and shouting. She ran to the door and saw the half-grown Hawkins boy driving the hens towards home. They were running first one way and then another, and flying over bushes. The children came from the far end of the orchard and tried to help. She went out and, together, they finally got them shut in the run.

The boy’s face was red and he was plainly mad. “Your old hens ate our lettuce. They pecked at our cabbage,” he panted. “They’ve about ruined the whole garden. Pa says don’t you know there’s a law?”

“Law?” Ellen asked in wonder. “You mean I can’t turn them out?”

“Of course not— not in summer, anyway.”

“I thought they’d stay home,” Ellen answered apologetically, wiping her face with her apron. “I thought they’d like the grasshoppers.”

“Hens never stay home. They don’t have any sense.” He turned away then, and was soon crawling under the wire fence.

“You should have stayed,” was all she said to the children.

She walked slowly back to the house. Now she knew the chickens weren’t such a good idea. Everything she did seemed to be wrong. She was just too ignorant to live on a farm.

A peculiar smell was coming from the kitchen. She hurried in and found that the apricots had boiled over and burned on the stove, filling the room with smoke. She grabbed a spoon to stir the jam and found it burned to the bottom of the kettle. That was too much. She sat down, put her head on the table, and cried,

Thus John found her when he came home for lunch. “Now, now,” he comforted, lifting the burned kettle from the stove and carrying it outside. “Nothing can be that bad.”

Ellen raised her head and tearfully told her story. “The neighbors will never like me now,” she sobbed. “They’ll think I don’t have any more sense than the chickens.”

“Don’t worry about that,” John consoled, patting her shoulder. “I’ll go over and pay for the damage. I’ll fix it up while you wash your face. And do come out in the yard and cool off.”

A half hour later when John returned, Ellen had washed and combed her hair and put on a clean apron. She was scraping the stove. “How much?” she asked.

“Only three dollars,” he said, starting to make the fire. “I told him you just couldn’t bear to have anything shut up. I told him you had never seen a hen before.”

“Joke all you want,” Ellen said crossly, “but that makes three dollars less than I was figuring on for the payment. And see how much fruit and sugar I’ve wasted. I wish I had never seen those old chickens.”

Betty came in with an egg in each hand. “See,” she said, “two already. Won’t you cook one for me? I’m hungry.”

That made Ellen remember how hard it had been to get Betty to eat eggs in Chicago. She had said she didn’t like them, but now whenever she found one she wanted it cooked, whether it was mealtime or not.

John must have remembered, too, for he said, “Anyway, Betty thinks the hens are fine.”

Maybe they were, at that. After all, she had wanted this place mostly for John and Betty. Betty certainly was better. Her face was browner than her hair and her cheeks were rosy.

“I’ll get lunch right away,” Ellen decided. “You set the table, Betty, and you, John, bring some fresh water. We’ll all have eggs.”

(To be continued)