The Present and the Past

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‘Oh, dear, oh, dear!’ said Henry Clare.

His sister glanced in his direction.

‘They are pecking the sick one. They are angry because it is ill.’

‘Perhaps it is because they are anxious,’ said Megan, looking at the hens in the hope of discerning this feeling.

‘It will soon be dead,’ said Henry, sitting on a log with his hands on his knees. ‘It must be having death-pangs now.’

Another member of the family was giving his attention to the fowls. He was earnestly thrusting cake through the wire for their entertainment. When he dropped a piece he picked it up and put it into his own mouth, as though it had been rendered unfit for poultry’s consumption. His elders appeared to view his attitude either in indifference or sympathy.

‘What are death-pangs like?’ said Henry, in another tone.

‘I don’t know,’ said his sister, keeping her eyes from the sufferer of them. ‘And I don’t think the hen is having them. It seems not to know anything.’

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