Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 1.djvu/149

136 waddled on to visit Dame Partlet's son, who was ill of the pip.

'My child, my child! don't flap and stagger so! Let me hold you! Taste this mint-leaf! Have a drop of water! What shall I do?'

As poor Mrs. Cluck sighed and sobbed, her unhappy child went scuffling about on her back, gasping and rolling up her eyes in great anguish, for she had eaten too much of the fatal salt, and there was no help for her. When all was over they buried the dead chicken under a currant bush, covered the little grave with chickweed, and the bereaved parent wore a black string round her leg for a month.

Blot, 'the last of that bright band,' needed no mourning for she was as black as a crow. This was the reason why her mother never had loved her as much as she did the others, who were all