It was the satisfied cluckings of chickens finishing the remains of a great feast that reminded me of the groundnuts. Yes, every nut was gone. How stupid I had been to leave them uncovered with the kitchen door wide open. But such self-reproach did not occur to me at the time. For I was filled with a terrible anger and an overwhelming desire to publish the greedy offenders.
I seized a pestle and raised it high up above my head. By this time they had seen me were flying in disorder all over the kitchen. They tumbled over each other through the doorway. I let down my powerful weapon just in time to hit the last one right on the head.
I did hit ! It was the most active hen of the lot and therefore my bitterest enemy.’ Got you this time !’ I gasped in triumph as it croaked painfully. But my victory song did not last,for in a minute the poor thing was staggering about the kitchen and after a while it fell lifeless just near the fire. I leapt to rescue it from the eager flames. I shook it, examined it, shook it again and then tried to open its closed eyes with my finger. It would not move.
I raced with it to the house, got hold of the baby’s vaseline and rubbed a lump on the wound. No response. I put it down to try and make it walk but it gave a feeble ‘Coo’ and fell over. I applied another lump of vaseline, and carried it to a quiet part of the garden, rocking it like a baby. Seeing this had no effect I put it down and fanned it with a banana leaf.
All this time I was dreading what my father would do to me. Ofcourse the hen offended and deserved punishment, I told myself. Mother would be angry with me because of the groundnuts which were to make up the sauce for supper. But then punishing or killing the hen would not make less angry with me. In short I was going to bring both my mother’s and, worse still, my father’s anger against me by my foolish action. After five minutes’ vigorous fanning without any change a thought struck me. Back to the kitchen I raced and returned with a basin of water into which I dipped the poor thing. At long last, I was rewarded. Having drunk some water, the hen became normal again although it showed great disgust at my conduct and especially at being wetted so ruthlessly.
” I could have sworn there were no groundnuts in that sauce last night,’ said my mother the next morning.’ one could detect the tomatoes and egg plant all right, but no groundnuts.’ I kept quit.
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