the color of a cranberry, and her two
wide-open eyes about the color of her slippers. Her hair hung in yellow
fuzzy curls away down to the strings of her apron; and it always seemed
to me there must be a gold dollar rolling off the end of each curl, each
end was so round and gold yellow. Dainty Bessie!--and what do you
suppose? Why, she was deep in love with that old brown hen. Many and
many a time she had sent me scraps of news about her wonderful Coachy,
and had wished and wished that I would come and see her for myself. So
when, one day, a letter came from Bessie's father, asking me if I would
please hurry over to Featherdale to take charge of his house, and his
silver spoons, and his little daughter, while he took a journey with his
wife to visit a sick friend, I just threw my papers and pens into my
valise (I was writing a lecture then), jumped aboard the first train,
and went. So here we were together, on a breezy bright June
morning--Bessie and Coachy and I.

"There she is, uncle--there's my Coachy!" cried Bessie, as she slipped
from my arms. "Come, darling, come;" and Coachy spread out her wings,
and rushed toward her little mistress, who eagerly bent down and took
her. She kissed her brown back, and from a snowy apron pocket gave her
corn, and even while eating, this funny old hen brokenly hummed a tune.

"Let's go on the porch with her," said Bessie at last. So we settled on
the porch, with Coachy nestling between us.

"She isn't what you may call a very handsome hen--now is she, Bessie?"
laughed I.

But Bessie scarcely smiled. "If you knew something that I know," said
she, "you wouldn't make fun of her."

"Why--what?"

"Why, she was a poor orphan chicken--an' a dog killed her mother--an'
she had a _dreadful_ hard time getting grown up as big as she is now.
She's fallen into the well, an' had two of her toes froze off--"

"What! in the well?"

"No; in the winter," said Bessie, gravely. "And she's been so lonesome
down here, without any other hens to talk to, that papa says she'll have
to go out to the farm, where the other hens are, real soon, or she'll
die."

"Is that so?" said I, feeling sorry and a trifle awkward.

The little maid smoothed the rumpled feathers this way and that. "Yes,
that's so," she sighed. "Our farm is more'n a mile from here, but I'm
going to let her go."

"You can see her very often, can't you?" I asked.

"Yes; but, oh dear!" and there was another kiss put upon the brown