Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/204

Rh for a while, and when he didn't come back, she flew up on the back of a chair that stood near the door, and put her head under her wing.

I went back to my bed, for I knew they would do no harm. Early in the morning, when I was walking around the house, I heard a great shouting and laughing from Mr. Maxwell's room. He and Mr. Harry had just discovered the hen and the rabbit; and Mr. Harry was calling his mother to come and look at them. The rabbit had slept on the foot of the bed.

Mr. Harry was chaffing Mr. Maxwell very much, and was telling him that any one who entertained him was in for a traveling menagerie. They had a great deal of fun over it, and Mr. Maxwell said that he had had that pretty, white hen as a pet for a long time in Boston. Once when she had some little chickens, a frightened rabbit, that was being chased by a dog, ran into the yard. In his terror he got right under the hen's wings, and she sheltered him, and pecked at the dog's eyes, and kept him off till help came. The rabbit belonged to a neighbor's boy, and Mr. Maxwell bought it from him. From the day the hen protected him, she became his friend, and followed him everywhere.

I did not wonder that the rabbit wanted to see his master. There was something about that young man that made dumb animals just delight in him. When Mrs. Wood mentioned this to him he said, "I don't know why they should—I don't do anything to fascinate them."

"You love them," she said, "and they know it. That is the reason."