lost in the distance. When he had watched until it had disappeared,
Peter looked at the cage, and his face grew blank. All at once he began
to think it barely possible that his sister would not be quite as
delighted at the loss of her bird as he had at first fancied. To be sure
this was a free country, but with certain reservations. He began to feel
queer and frightened. "Goody! what shall I do?" he said to himself,
burying his hands in his pockets, and standing in a contemplative
attitude, with his chubby little legs very wide apart, the spectacles
still on the top of his head, "Goody! Minnie will want to cut off all my
fingers and toes for opening the door, I am sure she will! Oh! I know;
I'll just go and catch a chicken, and put it in the cage; it will be all
the same as the bird."

So the little scamp rushed into the kitchen for a handful of corn, and
as the chickens were very tame, and clustered around him the moment he
called them, he had no difficulty in capturing a small, white hen. Laden
with his prize, Peter went, with a hop, skip and jump, back to the
parlor, and by main force pushed and jammed the poor thing through the
door of the cage, and shut it, and then sat down, his face excessively
red, and breathing so hard you would have thought it was a porpoise
come out of the water to make a call upon the family.

The chicken, meanwhile, was lifting up first one leg and then the other,
in her very close quarters, with an expression of perfect astonishment
and disgust--occasionally giving vent to her displeasure by a dismal
"squawk," very unlike the sweet tones of a singing bird.

Peter thought the new bird might, perhaps, be hungry, and was scolding
him about it; so he went again into the kitchen, and walked off with
nearly a whole loaf of bread, which he crumbled in a great heap in a
corner of the cage. The chicken only kicked it out in all directions
over the carpet, and made a worse noise than ever, which plainly said,
"I want to get out! I want to get out!"

Poor Peter felt that he was in a terrible scrape when he heard this
abominable noise. I wish you could have seen his face when his sister
Minnie came into the parlor, a few moments after, to practise her music.
It was just the color of a stick of sealing wax or a fireman's shirt,
and he looked frightened out of his five senses, and the whole of his
wits.

At first she did not notice that any thing was amiss, as the piano was
at the other end of the