She was so kind to all the children. Everyone loved Squeaker. When my little yellow chicken, that peeped and peeped all the time, grew up and became a beautiful young white rooster, Donna Lee Strong's bulldog killed it. Mommy spanked Squeaker by mistake. She was sorry when she realized Squeaker didn't do it. She should have known because Squeaker was gentle.

Mr. Morrill, who was a veterinarian and Denny's father, and who lived across the street, said the chicken would be a rooster with cockles and comb, but we had hoped it would be a hen and lay eggs.

Then I thought he might be a beautiful rooster with shiny greenish-purple feathers in his tail and bronze and red with bright and shiny colors all over him, but he wouldn't have had all these things. We couldn't eat it, anyhow, of course, when he was killed.

So we had a big funeral. All the children came. We marched in a funeral procession, buried him, and marked his grave. Squeaker went too.

Squeaker used to come in the house and sit primly on the fireplace hearth, straight up, watching us, on her best behavior. She was usually muddy, for she loved the outdoors. She was very careful with Mommy's things. She used to walk the two blocks to the bus with us and wait with us till we got on. She was a wonderful, wonderful friend. There could never be another dog as good as Squeaker was. We were lucky to have had her.

Mommy and I were sad for a long, long time because of our misfortune. But I was sad over lots of things because I didn't understand enough about how God did things and how everything on earth had a meaning. These are called symbols.

Symbols are objects to express our belief with things we see in the things that are unseen. They began a long, long time ago because people always knew there were great powers they couldn't see.

The wind was one of them, for the ancient Hebrew people knew about the four winds. The East and the West and the North and the South winds made all the movements of air and weather.

Mommy used to talk about my being born in the March wind that came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. That's a symbol!

When I left, it was in the November wind, for not long after that day, the winds blew and blew in a terrible storm. Mommy saw the tall tips of the oak trees swaying and bending way over in the wind. She watched the way I did all the while I was sick, and she felt very sad.

But now, she has learned the way I have, all about the wind being the Holy Spirit coming to teach us, as He taught the Apostles of Jesus.

She thinks now in symbols too. It all began with the vision of the angels and all the things that happened.

More and more, she found out all about the wonderful truth of Easter. Easter was when Jesus, then Son of God, came out of His grave like the chicken bursts out of the shell of an egg. That is the symbol of Easter. It means that, in the beginning, God planned it this way because God decides everything. Easter is a beginning of a closer nearness to God.

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