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The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy, a novel by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII THE DEPARTED ROOSTER--THE GROCERY MAN DISCOURSES ON DEATH-- THE DEAD ROOSTER--A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH--THE TENDERNESS BETWEEN THE ROOSTER AND HIS FAITHFUL HEN--THE HEN RETIRES TO SET--THE CHICKENS!--THE PROUD ROOSTER DIES--THE FICKLE HEN FLIRTING IN INDECENT HASTE. "Why don't you take an ice pick and clean the dirt out from under your finger nails?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store and stroked the cat the wrong way as she lay in the sun on the counter, on a quire of manilla paper. "Can't remove the dirt for thirty days--it is an emblem of mourning. Had a funeral at our house, yesterday;" and the boy took a pickle out of a tub and put it in the cat's mouth, and shut her teeth together on it, and then went to the show case, while the grocery man whose back had been turned during the pickle exercise, thought by the way the cat jumped into the dried apple barrel, and began to paw and scratch with all four of her feet, and yowl, that she was going to have a fit. "I hadn't heard about it," said the grocery man, as he took the cat by the neck and tossed her out in the back shed into an old oyster box full of sawdust, with a parting injunction that if she was going to have fits she better go out where there was plenty of fresh air. "Death is always a sad thing to contemplate. One day we are full of health, and joy, and cold victuals, and the next we are screwed down in a box, a few words are said over our remains, a few tears are shed, and there is a race to see who shall get back from the cemetery first; and though we may think we are an important factor in the world's progress, and sometimes feel as though it would be unable to put up margins and have to stop the deal, the world goes right along, and it must annoy people who die to realize that they don't count for game. The greatest man in the world is only a nine spot when he is dead, because somebody else takes the tricks the dead man ought to have taken. But, say, who is dead at your house?" "Our rooster! Take care, don't you hit me with that canvassed ham!" said the boy as the grocery man looked mad to learn that there was nobody dead but a rooster, when he had preached such a sermon on the subject. "Yes, how soon we are forgotten when we are gone. Now, you would have thought that rooster's hen would have remained faithful to him for a week at least. I have watched them all the spring, and I never saw a more perfect picture of devotion than that between the bantam rooster and his hen. They were constantly together, and there was nothing too good for her. He would dig up angle worms and call her, and when she came up on a gallop and saw the great big worm on the ground, she would look so proud of her rooster, and he would straighten up and look as though he was saying to her, 'I'm a daisy,' and then she would look at him as if she would like to bite him, and just as she was going to pick up the worm he would snatch it and swallow it himself, and chuckle and walk around and be full of business, as though wondering why she didn't take the worm after he had dug it for her, and then the hen would look disappointed at first and then she would look resigned, as much as to say, 'Worms are too rich for my blood anyway, and the poor dear rooster needs them more than I do, because he has to do all the crowing,' and she would go off and find a grasshopper and eat it on the sly for fear he would see her and complain because she didn't divide. O, I have never seen anything that seemed to me so human as the relations between that rooster and hen. He seemed to try to do everything for her. He would make her stop cackling when she laid an egg, and he would try to cackle, and crow over it as though he had laid it, and she would get off in a corner and cluck in a modest, retiring manner, as though she wished to convey the idea to the servant girls in the kitchen that the rooster had to do all the hard work, and she was only a useless appendage, fit only for society and company for him. But I was disgusted with him when the poor hen was setting. The first week that she sat on the eggs he seemed to get along first rate, because he had a couple of flower beds to dig up, which a press of business had caused him to neglect before, and a couple of neighbors' gardens to destroy, so he seemed to be glad to have his hen retire to her boudoir and set, but after he had been shooed out of the gardens and flower beds he seemed to be nervous, and evidently wanted to be petted, and he would go near the hen and she would seem to tell him to go and take a walk around the block, because she hadn't time to leave her business, and if she didn't attend to it they would have a lot of spoiled eggs on their hand, and no family to bring up. He would scold, and seem to tell her that it was all foolishness, that for his part he didn't want to hear a lot of chickens squawking around. He would seem to argue with her that a brood of chickens would be a dead give-away on them both, and they would be at once classed as old folks, while if they were alone in the world they would be spring chickens, and could go in young society, but the hen would scold back, and tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself to talk that way, and he would go off mad, and sulk around a spell, and then go to a neighbor's hen-house and sometimes he wouldn't come back till the next day. The hen would be sorry she had spoken so cross, and would seem pained at his going away and would look anxiously for his return, and when he came back after being out in the rain all night, she would be solicitious after his health, and tell him he ought to wrap something around him, but he acted as though he didn't care for his health, and he would go out again and get chilled through. Finally the hen come off the nest with ten chickens, and the rooster seemed very proud, and when anybody came out to have a look at them he would crow, and seemed to say they were all his chickens, though the hen was a long time hatching them, and if it had been him that was setting on them he could have hatched them out in a week, or died a trying. But the exposure told on him, and he went into a decline, and one morning we found him dead. Do you know, I never see a hen that seemed to realize a calamity as she did. She looked pale, and her eyes looked red, and she seemed to be utterly crushed. If the chickens, which were so young they could not realize that they were little orphans, became noisy, and got to pulling and hauling over a worm, and conducted themselves in an unseemly manner, she would talk to them in hen language, with tears in her eyes, and it was a picture of woe. But the next day a neighboring rooster got to looking through the fence from the alley, and trying to flirt with her. At first she was indignant, and seemed to tell him he ought to go about his business, and leave her alone, but the dude kept clucking, and pretty soon the widowed hen edged up towards the fence, and asked him to come in, but the hole in the fence was too small for him, and then the chickens went out in the alley, and the hen followed them out. I shall always think she told the chickens to go out, so she would have an excuse to go after them, and flirt with the rooster, and I think it is a perfect shame. She is out in the alley half the time, and I could cuff her. It seems to me wrong to so soon forget a deceased rooster, but I suppose a hen can't be any more than human. Say, you don't want to buy a good dead rooster do you? You could pick it and sell it to somebody that owes you, for a spring chicken." "No, I don't want any deceased poultry, that died of grief, and you better go home and watch your hen, or you will be bereaved some more," and the grocery man went out in the shed to see if the cat was over its fit, and when he came back the boy was gone, and after a while the grocery man saw a crowd in front of the store and he went out and found the dead rooster lying on the vegetable stand, with a paper pinned on its breast on which was a sign:-- THIS RUSTER DIDE OF COLIX. FOR SALE CHEAP TO BOARDING HOUSE ONLY. He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, and looked up and down the street for the bad boy, and went in and hid a raw hide where he could reach it handy. _ |
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