Page:Wiggin--Mother Carey's chickens.djvu/85

 "It is as good an exercise as any other, and you still tell a story far better than you write it!"

Nancy did this sort of improvising every now and then, and had done it from earliest childhood; and sometimes, of late, Mother Carey looked at her eldest chicken and wondered if after all she had hatched in her a bird of brighter plumage or rarer song than the rest, or a young eagle whose strong wings would bear her to a higher flight!