conservatory!

It frightened the hen. It might have frightened any one. She dropped her
victim into a Portugal laurel (from which he was presently extracted,
disordered but, save for his less delicate garments, uninjured), made a
flapping leap for the roof of Fulcher's stables, put her foot through a
weak place in the tiles, and descended, so to speak, out of the infinite
into the contemplative quiet of Mr. Bumps the paralytic--who, it is now
proved beyond all cavil, did, on this one occasion in his life, get down
the entire length of his garden and indoors without any assistance
whatever, bolt the door after him, and immediately relapse again into
Christian resignation and helpless dependence upon his wife....

The rest of the pullets were headed off by the other croquet players,
and went through the vicar's kitchen garden into the doctor's field, to
which rendezvous the fifth also came at last, clucking disconsolately
after an unsuccessful attempt to walk on the cucumber frames in Mr.
Witherspoon's place.

They seem to have stood about in a hen-like manner for a time, and
scratched a little and chirrawked meditatively, and then one pecked at
and pecked over a hive of the doctor's bees, and after that they set off
in a gawky, jerky, feathery, fitful sort of way across the fields
towards Urshot, and Hickleybrow Street saw them no more. Near Urshot
they really came upon commensurate food in a field of swedes; and pecked
for a space with gusto, until their fame overtook them.

The chief immediate reaction of this astonishing irruption of gigantic
poultry upon the human mind was to arouse an extraordinary passion to
whoop and run and throw things, and in quite a little time almost all
the available manhood of Hickleybrows and several ladies, were out with
a remarkable assortment of flappish and whangable articles in hand--to
commence the scooting of the giant hens. They drove them into Urshot,
where there was a Rural Fete, and Urshot took them as the crowning glory
of a happy day. They began to be shot at near Findon Beeches, but at
first only with a rook rifle. Of course birds of that size could absorb
an unlimited quantity of small shot without inconvenience. They
scattered somewhere near Sevenoaks, and near Tonbridge one of them fled
clucking for a time in excessive agitation, somewhat ahead of and
parallel with the afternoon boat express--to the great astonishment of
every one therein.

And about half-past five tw