answered
the "cut-cut-c't-a-a-ah-cut" of her hen with a gift of crumbs, and then
took possession of the new-laid egg, placing it carefully in a
cracker-box. When, at the end of as many days, a dozen eggs lay side by
side, she took them out, wrapped each one in paper, packed them all in a
lard-bucket full of shorts, and, mounting the blue mare, rode to the
station, where she had the satisfaction of seeing eleven cents put
opposite her name in the egg-book at the general merchandise store.

This was repeated four times, and, the price of eggs having gone up a
few cents in each interval, the little girl had sixty cents to put in
her bank, which raised her total to one dollar fifty-nine. On her June
birthday the family presented her with four dimes; the week after she
sold a wooden squirt-gun to the neighbor woman's son for five cents. It
was then plain that, if Sassy should continue to furnish eggs
faithfully, the dress was assured.

But at this happy juncture, and, womanlike, without a single cluck of
warning, the leghorn ceased her diurnal laying, and, after a spasmodic
week, during which she scattered three or four eggs on the little girl's
bed, gave no further sign of justifying her existence.

The little girl was in despair, and at once confided Sassy's delinquency
to the eldest brother, who knew a great deal about chickens. He said
that a leghorn was an all-year-round layer, and that when a hen of the
breed failed to uphold the standard of her kind she was fit only for
broiling. The youngest brother, overhearing the account of Sassy's
conduct and the eldest brother's comments, volunteered the opinion that
nothing ailed the chicken but the pip, and advised fat and pepper. But
when three days had gone by and the leghorn, with generous doses of
axle-grease and cayenne, ailed rather than recovered, the little girl
ceased her administrations.

It occurred to her, in the midst of her worry, that perhaps Sassy wanted
to set. Accordingly she got ten eggs together, arranged them in a nest,
caught the hen, and put her upon them. But here a new and unlooked-for
thing happened. Sassy would not stay on the nest. Not at all daunted,
the little girl procured a broad strip of calico and tied the hen down.
But in her struggles to get free, Sassy broke nearly all of the eggs
under her, and finally hied herself out of the new coop and over the
smoke-house to liberty.

Unhappy that her leghorn thus spurned to mother a brood, the li