“Now, let’s see how heavy you are,” said Grandmother, “maybe we’ll need your Grandfather after all.”  She put her hands under Mary Jane’s arms and tried to lift her up.  “I can do it but I can’t hold you long enough,” she said with a shake of her head, “better run call your grandfather, dear.”

“But he’s way out in the barn,” cried Mary Jane who was fairly dancing with eagerness she was so anxious to see the surprise; “can’t I get a chair?” And then she thought how silly that was when of course there wasn’t a chair in the chicken house!  “Or a box, Grandmother,” she added as an after thought.

“A box?” questioned Grandmother, looking around thoughtfully, “oh, yes!  I know.  There’s one right out in that next room.  It’s not very heavy and I believe you can get it yourself, Mary Jane.  Suppose you try.”

Mary Jane was very glad to try.  She hurried out the door into the other room, spied the box over in the corner and dragged it back into the little room where Grandmother was waiting.

“See, Grandmother?” she said proudly.  “I can stand on it.”

“So you can, so you can,” agreed Grandmother much pleased.  “You’re a good planner, little girl.  Now turn the box on its long side, so; and climb on it; then—­”

“What’s that noise?” exclaimed Mary Jane suddenly as through the quiet of the little room she heard a queer, “Peep!  Peep!” So many “peeps,” so soft and low that she was hardly sure she heard them.

“Never mind!” cried Grandmother, who was looking into the big case that Mary Jane had thought was a desk.  “Climb up quickly and look!”

Mary Jane needed no second urging.  She set the box on its long side and, grasping her grandmother’s hand firmly so it wouldn’t tip over as she stepped on it, she climbed up and looked into the “desk.”

Such a sight as met her eyes!  Tiny little chicks!  Rows and rows and rows of them!  Under the glass cover of that queer looking case.

“They’s about a million!” she gasped in amazement, “all in one box!”

“Not a million, dear,” laughed Grandmother, “but a good many and they’re almost ready to take out.”

“But how did they get in?” asked Mary Jane much puzzled.

Grandmother explained that the queer looking “desk” was really an incubator—­a box in which eggs were kept warm till the little creature inside each egg was big enough to break the shell and take care of itself.

Mary Jane looked and looked and looked and thought it was the most wonderful of all the many wonders she had seen at Grandmother’s.  She thought of a dozen questions she wanted to ask, but Grandmother seemed so busy tending to this and that and the other that she decided to wait till some other time to ask them.

“Now, dear,” said Grandmother, “you stay here and be deciding which you want for yours while I get your grandfather to help me take them out.  I was so in hopes you could see this, pet, because I knew you’d like to.”