hapter XV: A feathered pet.

No record of those dear, distant days would be complete without a short
memoir of "Kitty." She was only a grey Dorking hen, but no heroine in
fact or fiction, no Lady Rachel Russell or _Fleurange,_ ever exceeded
Kitty in unswerving devotion to a beloved object, or rather objects.

To see Kitty was to admire her, at least as I saw her one beautiful
spring evening in a grassy paddock on the banks of the Horarata. We
had ridden over there to visit our kind and friendly neighbours,
the C----'s; we had enjoyed a delicious cup of tea in the
passion-flower-covered verandah, which looked on the whole range, from
East to West, of the glorious Southern Alps, their shining white summits
sharply cut against our own peculiarly beautiful sky; we had strolled
round the charming, unformal garden, on either sloping side of a wide
creek, and had admired, with just a tinge of envy, the fruits and
flowers, the standard apple and rose trees, the tangle of fern and
creepers, the wealth of the old and new worlds heaped together in floral
profusion; we had done all this, I say, and very pleasant we had found
it. Now we were trying to say goodbye: not so easy a task, let me tell
you, when there are so many temptations to linger, and when you are
greatly pressed to stay. The last device of our hospitable hostess to
keep us consisted in offering to show me her poultry-yard. Now I was a
young beginner in that line myself, and tormented my ducks and fowls
to death by my incessant care: at least that is the conclusion I have
arrived at since; but at that time, I considered it as necessary to
look after them as if they had been so many children. The consequence
was,--as I pathetically complained to Mrs. C----, that my hens sat
furiously for a week, and then took to lingering outside, where
perpetual feeding was going on, until their eggs grew cold; that my
ducks neglected their offspring and allowed the rats to decimate them,
and that every variety of epidemic and misfortune assailed in turns my
unhappy poultry yard. Kind Mrs. C---- listened as gravely as she could,
hinting _very_ gently, that perhaps I took too much trouble about them;
then, fearing least she might have wounded my feelings, she hastened to
suggest that I should try the introduction of a different breed.

As a preliminary step to this reformation, she offered to bestow upon
me one of her best Dorking hens. It was too tempting an offer to be
refused, a