“O, they will get cold, if you don’t make haste,” cried Alice. “I came as quick as ever I could without breaking them. Mr. Byrne says they will be hatched, if you put them near the fire before they have grown cold.” “I did not think he would have ventured to take them from under the hen. I wonder what Mr. Mackintosh will say if he finds it out,” observed Mrs. Byrne, bustling about to seek a shallow basket, which, lined with a flannel petticoat, and placed near the fire, might serve as a warm nest for the fourteen eggs. “The poor hen partridge is dead,” said Alice. “She was sitting on the eggs when Mr. Byrne cut off her head, poor thing, with his scythe. He saw me through the pales, and gave me the eggs, and bade me come to you with them; but before I left, the cock partridge came home; and there he is walking about, poor fellow, in the middle of the grass, just as if he was too unhappy to be afraid of any body. But when do you think these eggs will be hatched?” Very soon, if at all, Mrs. Byrne thought. She advised Alice to stay here and watch, instead of going down to the rectory any more to-day. It was not likely that more partridges’ eggs would be found; and she had remembered since Alice left her—(she was sorry she had forgotten it before)—that she might make hay, after a manner, in this garden, though she did not pretend that it could compare with the rectory garden. “You see, however, that it is very well I went,” said Alice, with a superior air. “Now I should like to stay and watch the eggs. Papa will not mind about my going home to dinner, just to-day.” Mrs. Byrne forthwith made another dumpling, and Alice stood, growing hotter every moment, close by the fire, peeping in between the folds of the flannel, in the incessant expectation of seeing a tiny bird’s head pop up. Mrs. Byrne soon perceived that she would at this rate totally exhaust herself before anything could come to pass, and opened up again her proposition about hay-making in the garden. The grass borders were somewhat overgrown, and there was a little plat,—a very small one, to be sure,—behind the cottage, where Mrs. Byrne hung out the linen to dry. From this plat a good deal of grass might be cut with Byrne’s shears; if they could be found; and Alice could be called in the first moment that a bird was hatched. It would be a fine thing to show people that Alice could make hay in other places besides the rectory garden.