DAVID C. COOK PUBLISHING CO., ELGIN, ILLINOIS.
GEORGE E. COOK, EDITOR.
APRIL 19, 1914.
Dorothy Deane and her little brother Laurence were standing by thewindow watching for papa.
"There he comes!" cried Dorothy at last, and the children raced towardthe corner as fast as their chubby little legs would carry them.
"Careful now!" said papa warningly, as the two hurrying little figuresreached him. "Don't hit against my dinner pail!"
"What is in it?" asked Dorothy and Laurence in one breath, as they stoodon tiptoe, trying to peep inside the cover.
"Guess!" said papa, laughing. "A nickel to the one who guesses right!"
"Candy!" cried Laurence.
"Oranges!" said Dorothy.
Papa shook his head at both these guesses, and at all the others thatfollowed, until they had reached the house.
"Now let mamma have a turn," he said, holding the dinner pail up to herear.
"Why, it isn't—" mamma began, with a look of greatest surprise.
"Yes, it is!" papa declared. Then he took off the cover and tipped thepail gently over in the middle of the kitchen table and out came ten ofthe fluffiest, downiest little chickens that any of them had ever seen.
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the children delightedly. "Are they really ours?Where did you get them?"
"They are power-house chickens," papa replied, smiling at theirenthusiasm—"hatched right in the engine room!"
"What do you mean?" asked mamma in astonishment, gazing at the prettylittle creatures.
"Just what I say," replied papa, who was an engineer in the big powerhouse down town: "they were hatched on a shelf in the engine room."
"It was just this way," he explained, hanging up his hat. "Tom Morganbrought me a dozen eggs from his new hennery about three weeks ago. Iput them on the shelf, intending to bring them home that night, butnever thought of them until this morning, when there seemed to besomething stirring up there. I looked, and, sure enough, there was afine brood of chickens, just picking their way out of their shells!"
"But how did it ever happen?" asked mamma in a puzzled tone.
"Because the engine, running night and day, gave the eggs just as muchheat as they would have found under a hen's wings," papa replied: "andthey thought that they were put up there to hatch."
"Oh, aren't they darlings!" cried Dorothy, clapping her hands as thechickens began to eat the crumbs. "They are the nicest pets that we everhad in all our lives."
While papa was making a nice coop out of a wooden box, mamma found anempty tin can that had once held a gallon of maple syrup. She filledthis full of boiling water, screwed the cover on tight, and then wrappedit up in pieces of flannel.
"There," she exclaimed triumphantly, fastening the last strip, "let ussee how the chickens like this for a mother!"
Setting the can carefully in the center of the coop, she put the littlechickens close by it. Finding it soft and warm, they cuddled up againstthe flannel cover,