Uncle Peabody met me there in a moment and brought a pail of water and washed my face so that I felt and looked more respectable.
"If Aunt Deel asks ye about them scratches you just tell her that you and Hen had a little disagreement," said my uncle.
She didn't ask me, probably because Uncle Peabody had explained in his own way, and requested her to say nothing.
The worst was over for that day but the Baynes-Wills feud had begun.

It led to many a fight in the school yard and on the way home.

We were so evenly matched that our quarrel went on for a long time and gathered intensity as it continued.
One day Uncle Peabody had given me an egg and, said that there was a chicken in it.
"All ye have to do is to keep it warm an' the chicken will come to life, and when the hen is off the nest some day it will see light through the shell and peck its way out," he explained.
He marked my initials on the egg and put it under a hen and by and by a little chicken came out of the shell.

I held it in my palm--a quivering, warm handful of yellow down.

Its helplessness appealed to me and I fed and watched it every day.