Hatching out is an exciting time. The hen has to sit on the eggs and keep them warm and quiet for three whole weeks. It needs a lot of patience, doesn’t it? Joan knew there were some eggs due to hatch out very soon and she did wish she might see them. She knew it was really impossible though because the hen must be left alone then and not disturbed at all.
Joan was very fond of animals and always wanted to do the kindest thing for them; she was a nice child altogether, and tried to help her aunt with the farm. She was having such a good time and thoroughly enjoying her holidays. Her cousin Lulu had spent her holidays there too and been rather naughty, so Joan’s aunt told her. It seems Lulu had been asked not to go near, or in any way disturb, the hens that were sitting on their eggs, and had promised faithfully not to do so. You may guess the kind of child Lulu was when I tell you she broke her promise.
There was a speckled hen who was a very good mother and had brought up ever so many families, and when Lulu was there her eggs were due to hatch out very soon. They were not the eggs she had laid herself but some very special ones. When they were hatching out that naughty Lulu went to look. She simply didn’t bother about her promise and even pulled one of the eggs out from under the hen to see if it was already broken. The speckled hen was furious and terribly flurried; she had never been interfered with before and took it very much amiss. She didn’t mean to hurt her babies, of course, but she got so worried and nervous that she was not careful enough where she put her feet down and killed five of them. In her excitement she had trampled on them and the poor little things had scarcely lived at all. Of course, Lulu was very sorry, but that didn’t mend her promise nor bring the chickens back to life.
Joan was delighted when her aunt told her she might have a chance of seeing some hatching out. There were some eggs in the incubator which were due out very soon. An incubator is a sort of comfortable box which keeps the eggs as safe and warm as a mother hen, so that they come out in three weeks just as if a hen were looking after them. Only an incubator, not being alive, wouldn’t get flurried or excited at any one looking on. Joan was told there were eggs in it which were due to turn into chickens on Thursday or Friday.
One had still a bit of shell sticking to his back.
On Wednesday Joan kept running to look, on Thursday she still haunted the place, but on Friday she began to get a little tired of nothing happening. In the afternoon she was having a game with Cheeky, Fluffy and Co. when she was called in to see a pretty sight. Some chickens had just come out, and one had still a bit of shell sticking to his back. He was looking at the rest of it in such a comical way as if he were asking how he had ever been cramped up in such a little space. They were darling little chicks, and Joan was soon busy giving them names. She always loved them and often played with them, but somehow they never seemed quite as clever nor as human as her first friends.
Salome.