all the hens peck?" asked the Byrd, anxiously, as he came and squatted
beside me with two of the new kittens and the duck orphan in question in
his arms.

"No, Byrd, I don't believe so," I answered, from instinct rather than
direct knowledge.

"Why is they so many little ones in the world without mothers, me and
the duck and the cow that died 'fore Dr. Chubb came, her calf, and now
that mean old dog have left her puppies to eat out of a plate?" he
asked. He let the kittens slide to the ground, where they sprawled in
their blind helplessness, while he began to tenderly pry open the small
yellow ball's wide bill and insert crumbs of bread rolled into very
realistic pills, but which the patient gobbled with evident
appreciation.

"See, Byrd, you are just as good as a mother any day," I said, a choke
in my throat as I cuddled his thin little shoulder in the hollow between
my arm and my breast, and bent over to watch the orphan's meal.

"Like Sam," answered Byrd, with a queer little flash of his keen eyes up
at me, and a grin that was so like Sam's that I tumbled him over onto
the grass, duck and all, and began a frolic with him which delighted his
heart and eased mine. I've loved that "little one" since the day they
let me hold him in my arms when he was only a few hours old and
motherless. Examining him from heels to head had comforted Sam in his
anguish and eased my own sympathetic sorrow. It is a tradition that
Mammy Kitty rescued him just in time; but I've always felt that nothing
would have happened to him at Sam's sixteen-year-old hands if he had
been left for hours.