Short Stories, vol 9 | Page 7

the story came, agog with curiosity, to
ask news of Toine. They entered his room on tiptoe, as one enters a
sick- chamber, and asked:
"Well! how goes it?"
"All right," said Toine; "only it keeps me fearfully hot."
One morning his wife entered in a state of great excitement, and
declared:
"The yellow hen has seven chickens! Three of the eggs were addled."
Toine's heart beat painfully. How many would he have?
"Will it soon be over?" he asked, with the anguish of a woman who is
about to become a mother.
"It's to be hoped so!" answered the old woman crossly, haunted by fear
of failure.
They waited. Friends of Toine who had got wind that his time was
drawing near arrived, and filled the little room.
Nothing else was talked about in the neighboring cottages. Inquirers
asked one another for news as they stood at their doors.
About three o'clock Toine fell asleep. He slumbered half his time
nowadays. He was suddenly awakened by an unaccustomed tickling
under his right arm. He put his left hand on the spot, and seized a little
creature covered with yellow down, which fluttered in his hand.
His emotion was so great that he cried out, and let go his hold of the
chicken, which ran over his chest. The bar was full of people at the
time. The customers rushed to Toine's room, and made a circle round
him as they would round a travelling showman; while Madame Toine
picked up the chicken, which had taken refuge under her husband's
beard.
No one spoke, so great was the tension. It was a warm April day.
Outside the window the yellow hen could be heard calling to her
newly- fledged brood.
Toine, who was perspiring with emotion and anxiety, murmured:
"I have another now--under the left arm."
His' wife plunged her great bony hand into the bed, and pulled out a
second chicken with all the care of a midwife.
The neighbors wanted to see it. It was passed from one to another, and

examined as if it were a phenomenon.
For twenty minutes no more hatched out, then four emerged at the
same moment from their shells.
There was a great commotion among the lookers-on. And Toine smiled
with satisfaction, beginning to take pride in this unusual sort of
paternity. There were not many like him! Truly, he was a remarkable
specimen of humanity!
"That makes six!" he declared. "Great heavens, what a christening we'll
have!"
And a loud laugh rose from all present. Newcomers filled the bar. They
asked one another:
"How many are there?"
"Six."
Toine's wife took this new family to the hen, who clucked loudly,
bristled her feathers, and spread her wings wide to shelter her growing
brood of little ones.
"There's one more!" cried Toine.
He was mistaken. There were three! It was an unalloyed triumph! The
last chicken broke through its shell at seven o'clock in the evening. All
the eggs were good! And Toine, beside himself with joy, his brood
hatched out, exultant, kissed the tiny creature on the back, almost
suffocating it. He wanted to keep it in his bed until morning, moved by
a mother's tenderness toward the tiny being which he had brought to
life, but the old woman carried it away like the others, turning a deaf
ear to her husband's entreaties.
The delighted spectators went off to spread the news of the event, and
Horslaville, who was the last to go, asked:
"You'll invite me when the first is cooked, won't you, Toine?"
At this idea a smile overspread the fat man's face, and he answered:
"Certainly I'll invite you, my son-in-law."

MADAME HUSSON'S "ROSIER"
We had just left Gisors, where I was awakened to hearing the name of
the town called out by the guards, and I was dozing off again when a
terrific shock threw me forward on top of a large lady who sat opposite
me.
One of the wheels of the engine had broken, and the engine itself lay

across the track. The tender and the baggage car were also derailed, and
lay beside this mutilated engine, which rattled, groaned, hissed, puffed,
sputtered, and resembled those horses that fall in the street with their
flanks heaving, their breast palpitating, their nostrils steaming and their
whole body trembling, but incapable of the slightest effort to rise and
start off again.
There were no dead or wounded; only a few with bruises, for the train
was not going at full speed. And we looked with sorrow at the great
crippled iron creature that could not draw us along any more, and that
blocked the track, perhaps for some time, for no doubt they would have
to send to Paris for a special train to come to our