Chapter 2

VIII

WHY THE ROOSTER CROWED

Henrietta Hen had commanded the Rooster to wait until daylight before he began to crow.

He saw that she had made up her mind that he must obey her. But he knew he couldn't. And he always took great pains to be polite to the ladies.

It was a wonder the Rooster didn't turn red in the face. He had never found himself in such a corner before.

"You don't understand," he blurted. "I'd be delighted to oblige you, but if I didn't crow until after the sun rose I'd never crow again."

"We could stand that," was Henrietta Hen's grim reply.

"Perhaps!" he admitted--for she made him feel strangely humble. "But could you stand it if the night lasted forever?"

"You're talking nonsense now," she declared.

"You don't understand," he told her again. "And I must say I'm surprised, madam, that you didn't know it was I that waked the sun up every morning. _That's_ why I crow so early."

Henrietta Hen was so astonished that she didn't know what to say. She thought deeply for a time--or as deeply as she could.

"Have you not noticed," the Rooster inquired, "that the sun never rises until I've crowed loudly a good many times?"

"No! No--I haven't," Henrietta murmured. "But now that you speak of it, I see that it's so."

"Exactly!" he said. "And often, madam, I have to crow a long time before he peeps over Blue Mountain. It's lucky I have a good, strong voice," the Rooster, added with a smirk, for he was feeling more at his ease. "If I had a thin, squeaky crow such as those worthless cockerels have, Farmer Green would have had to do many a day's work in the dark."

"Goodness!" Henrietta Hen gasped. "Do crow your loudest the moment you wake up, Mr. Rooster! Do make all the noise you can!" And he promised faithfully that he would.

Henrietta left him then. Somehow she couldn't get their talk out of her mind. And soon she had an unhappy thought. What if anything should happen to the Rooster's voice?

The moment that question popped into her head, Henrietta Hen hurried back to the Rooster.

"Do be careful!" she besought him. "Don't get your feet wet! For if you caught cold you might be so hoarse that you couldn't speak above a whisper."

The Rooster thanked her politely for thinking of his health.

"I always take good care of myself," he assured her.

"It looks like rain this minute," she said as she cast an anxious glance at the sky. "Hadn't you better run into the barn?"

He thought otherwise--and said as much.

"You ought to wear rubbers every day," she chided him, as she went away again.

Soon Henrietta returned once more to urge the Rooster to carry an umbrella. And it wasn't long after that when she came bustling up to him and informed him that a warm muffler about his throat wouldn't be amiss.

There seemed to be no end to her suggestions. And though at first the Rooster had liked to hear them (without having any idea of following them) after a time Henrietta's attentions began to annoy him.

"Great cracked corn!" he exclaimed. "This Henrietta Hen is getting to be a pest."

IX

HAUGHTY HENRIETTA

Feeling as important as she did, Henrietta Hen liked to have her own way. She said that she couldn't be expected to do just as others wished.

"I'll take orders from nobody," she often declared. "And if I lay eggs for Farmer Green I shall lay them when and where I please."

Henrietta took special delight in laying her eggs in out-of-the-way places. She was never content to lay two in the same nest.

"If they left them for me perhaps I'd feel differently," she explained to her neighbors. "But Johnnie Green gathers every egg that he can find. And if he takes my eggs I'll make him hunt for them, anyhow."

The older, more staid hens shook their heads when Henrietta talked like that. They told her she was ungrateful.

"Farmer Green gives you a snug home and plenty of food," they reminded her. "And the least you can do is to repay him. You ought not to make trouble by hiding your eggs."

But Henrietta Hen couldn't--or wouldn't--agree with them.

"It's all very well for you to talk," she retorted. "If my eggs were undersized I shouldn't mind losing them as fast as I laid them. But I lay the biggest and finest eggs to be had. So it's only natural that I should like to have at least _one_ around to look at--and to show to callers."

Now, there were plenty of other hens in the flock that laid eggs exactly as big--or even bigger--than Henrietta Hen's. Some of them told her as much. Yet it did them no good to talk to her. She wouldn't believe that there were any eggs in the world to compare with hers. So her neighbors learned after a while that they might as well let Henrietta Hen manage her affairs as she pleased. They couldn't help hoping, however, that somehow Farmer Green would find a way to outwit her.

"What can Henrietta Hen be so boastful about now?" the hens asked one another one day. "She acts as if she thought more highly of herself than ever."

They soon discovered the reason for Henrietta's unusually pompous manner. For she began to make calls on all her friends. And she invited everybody to come to her latest nest high up in the haymow.

"I've something there to show you," she said with an air of mystery. "You'll be surprised to see it."

Most of Henrietta's neighbors did not show any great curiosity to see the surprise. They smiled at one another. "She's laid another egg--that's all!" they whispered.

But there are always some that can't rest until they know everybody else's business. And it was lucky that Henrietta Hen hurried home to receive her callers, because she had a good many. They came even earlier in the afternoon than was strictly fashionable. And they came in a crowd, too. That, however, didn't bother Henrietta Hen. Nor could they have arrived too soon to suit her.

"Look!" she cried, when they reached her nest high up in the haymow. "Did you ever see anything to beat that?"

X

THE BIG, WHITE EGG

When Henrietta Hen's callers crowded about her nest in the haymow they expected to see something wonderful. But when they craned their necks and peered into the little hollowed-out snuggery in the hay they couldn't help being disappointed. And when they didn't burst forth with cries of surprise and praise Henrietta Hen looked quite unhappy.

"I thought," she said, "you'd want to see this egg. I'm sure you never beheld a bigger nor a whiter one than this."

They admitted that the egg was big and that it was very, very white. And if their praise was faint, Henrietta never noticed it.

"Are you going to let Farmer Green have that egg?" one of the company inquired.

"No doubt Johnnie Green will grab it as soon as he finds my nest," said Henrietta with something like a sigh. "If I could only keep this one I wouldn't care how many others he took."

Polly Plymouth Rock turned to old Whitey, a hen who had come with her to the haymow.

"What do you think?" Polly asked. "Is Henrietta in danger of losing this egg that she thinks so much of?"

"She needn't be alarmed," old Whitey answered. "If Johnnie Green robs her of this one, I'll miss my guess."

"Oh! I'm glad to hear you say that!" Henrietta Hen cried. "Now I won't need to worry--that is, if you know what you're talking about."

That, of course, was a most impolite way for Henrietta Hen to speak to anybody of old Whitey's age. Whitey was the oldest hen in the flock. And what she didn't know about such things as nests and eggs and roosts wasn't worth knowing.

Polly Plymouth Rock didn't like Henrietta Hen's remark. She opened her mouth.

And no doubt she would have said something quite sharp in reply. But old Whitey stopped her.

"Never mind!" said Whitey. "The day will come when Henrietta Hen will agree that my guess is a good one."

Still Henrietta Hen felt uneasy about that big, white egg.

"I do hope Johnnie Green won't find this new nest of mine," she remarked.

"If he does, I fear he'll take my beautiful egg away from me."

"Lay another!" said old Whitey. "Lay another and he'll take that and leave this one."

"I suppose I may as well try your scheme," Henrietta replied, "since nobody suggests anything better."

"My idea's a good one, or I'll miss my guess," said old Whitey.

There was some snickering among Henrietta Hen's callers as they bade her good afternoon and left her.

"They're laughing at old Whitey," she said to herself. She hadn't the slightest notion that they could be giggling at _her_. "Old Whitey must be wrong," she thought. "But I may as well take her advice, for I don't know what else to do."

Not long afterward Henrietta Hen came fluttering down from the haymow, squawking at the top of her lungs for old Whitey. And as soon as she found her, Henrietta cried, "Come up to my nest right away! I want to ask your advice."

Although she didn't say "Please!" old Whitey went with her.

XI

OLD WHITEY'S ADVICE

Old Whitey--the most ancient hen in the flock--scrambled with some difficulty up to the top of the haymow in Farmer Green's barn. She could scarcely keep up with Henrietta Hen, whom she was following--by request. And when she arrived, breathless, at Henrietta's nest that proud and elegant creature turned a troubled face toward her.

"See!" said Henrietta. "I've taken your advice and laid another egg. But it's nothing like the beautiful, big, white one. This last egg is much smaller; and it's brown."

Old Whitey nodded her head. "Well!" she said. "What's your difficulty?"

"Don't you think," said Henrietta, "that if Johnnie Green finds my nest he'll be sure to take both eggs?"

"No, I don't," was old Whitey's blunt answer.

"Then he'll be sure to take the big, white one," Henrietta Hen wailed.

"No, he won't," old Whitey told her. "If he does, I'll miss my guess."

Well, that was really too much for Henrietta Hen to believe.

"That boy will never take a little egg and leave a big one," she declared.

"You wait and see if he doesn't," old Whitey advised her.

So Henrietta waited. Though she had little faith in old Whitey's advice, Henrietta could think of nothing else to do. And the next morning, to her great surprise, when Johnnie Green climbed into the haymow and found her nest he took the small brown egg and put it in his hat. And he never touched the big, white egg at all. He didn't even pick it up and look at it!

Perched on a beam overhead Henrietta Hen watched him breathlessly. And as soon as he had gone she went flopping down to the barn floor and set up a great clamor for old Whitey.

"What is it now?" old Whitey asked, sticking her head inside the doorway.

"Your guess was a good one!" cried Henrietta Hen. "He came; and he took the small one."

"There!" said old Whitey. "I told you so! I knew Johnnie Green wouldn't rob you of that big egg. And if you keep laying small eggs in that same nest you'll find he'll let you keep the big one."

Henrietta Hen fairly beamed at her companion.

"How delightful!" she exclaimed. "I've become very, very fond of that big egg. I love to look at it. But there's another thing that worries me now. If that big egg should get broken--"

"Don't let that trouble you!" said old Whitey.

"I'm almost afraid to sit on my nest," Henrietta Hen confessed. "If the shell of that egg should happen to be thin--"

Old Whitey seemed much amused by Henrietta's fears.

"Let me know if you break it," she said. And then she left Henrietta with her treasure.

"I'll be very careful," Henrietta called after the old dame.

XII

PLAYING TRICKS

Now, the hen known as old Whitey was something of a gossip. She went straight to the farmyard and told everybody what had happened--what Henrietta Hen had said to her and what she had said to Henrietta Hen. The whole flock had a great laugh over the affair.

To Henrietta Hen's delight, all her neighbors took a keen interest in the wonderful white egg. They asked her countless questions about it. Above all, they always took pains to inquire whether she had been so unlucky as to crack the shell. And if Henrietta hadn't displeased Polly Plymouth Rock one day, the truth might never have come out.

Anyhow, Polly Plymouth Rock told Henrietta Hen that if she had any sense she would stop making such a fuss over a china egg.

"China egg!" cried Henrietta. "I don't know what you mean."

"That's not a real egg that you're so proud of," Polly Plymouth Rock declared. "It's nothing but a make-believe one. Johnnie Green left it in your nest to fool you, so you'd keep that nest and lay eggs in it, right along.... You're so careful not to break that china egg! Why, if you _tried_ to break it you'd find that it's solid as a rock."

Henrietta Hen couldn't believe the terrible news.

"I laid that egg myself!" she shrieked.

"You think you did; but you didn't," Polly Plymouth Rock snapped. "Johnnie Green took an egg of yours one day and left that other one in its place, to deceive you. And everybody on the farm--except you--knows that he succeeded."

Henrietta Hen didn't wait to hear anything more. She rushed squalling into the barn and went straight to her nest. One good, hard peck at the big white egg told her beyond all doubt that she had been betrayed. The beautiful, big, white egg wasn't an egg after all!

Now that Henrietta Hen knew it she wondered how it could ever have deceived her. She saw that it was shiny and altogether unlike any egg she had ever seen anywhere.

"Johnnie Green has played a mean trick on me," Henrietta Hen cackled. "And now I'll play one on him! He can have his old china egg. I'll leave it here for him. But he'll find none of _my_ beautiful little brown eggs beside it. I'll have my nest where he'll never discover it--not if he hunts for it all summer long!"

So saying, she left the haymow. And going into the carriage shed, her roving eyes chanced to light on an old straw hat of Johnnie Green's that lay upside down upon a high shelf.

Henrietta Hen managed to flutter up beside it. And then with many a chuckle she laid a brown egg in the hat.

"There!" she cackled. "This is the safest place on the farm. Johnnie Green hasn't had this hat on his head since last summer."

XIII

TWO IN A GARDEN

Jimmy Rabbit was enjoying a few nibbles at one of Farmer Green's cabbages. He hadn't noticed that there was anybody but himself in the garden. So it startled him to hear a shrill voice cry, "Get out of our garden!"

Jimmy Rabbit jumped. But he didn't jump far, for he soon saw that it was only Henrietta Hen speaking to him.

"Why should I get out of _our_ garden?" Jimmy Rabbit inquired mildly.

"I should have said, 'Farmer Green's garden,'" said Henrietta Hen.

"Thank you very much for the warning; but I don't think we need go away just yet--if old dog Spot isn't sniffing around," said Jimmy Rabbit. "I don't believe there's any danger."

"You don't understand," Henrietta Hen cried. "I _ordered_ you out of the garden."

"_You_ ordered me?" said Jimmy Rabbit, acting as if he were astonished.

"Yes!" Henrietta declared. "And I'd like to know when you're going to obey me."

"It's easy to answer that," Jimmy Rabbit replied. "I'm going away as soon as I've finished my luncheon." Nobody could have been pleasanter than he. Yet Henrietta Hen seemed determined to be disagreeable.

"I don't see your lunch basket," she remarked, looking all around.

"No!" he replied. "I forgot it. I meant to bring one with me and carry a cabbage-head home in it."

Henrietta Hen spoke as if she were very peevish.

"You've no right," she said, "to take one of the cabbages away with you."

"I'm not going to," Jimmy Rabbit explained.

"You were nibbling at one when I first noticed you," Henrietta Hen insisted.

"Was I?" he gasped. "Are you sure you're not mistaken? Are you sure you weren't pecking at a cabbage-leaf yourself?"

Now, the truth of the matter was that Henrietta had herself come to the garden to eat cabbage. Really she was no better than he was. But somehow Henrietta Hen never could believe that she was in the wrong.

"You're impertinent," she told Jimmy

Rabbit in her severest tone. "You know very well that Farmer Green raises these cabbages for home use only."

"Well," said Jimmy Rabbit, "I'll make myself at home here, then." And turning a cold shoulder on Henrietta Hen he began nibbling at a cabbage-leaf once more.

Henrietta felt quite helpless. Somehow nothing she could say to the intruder seemed to have the slightest effect on him. And he appeared to be enjoying his luncheon so thoroughly that it made Henrietta Hen very hungry just to see him eat. In spite of herself she couldn't resist joining him at luncheon.

"Ah!" he exclaimed between mouthfuls, "I see you're making yourself at home, too."

Henrietta Hen tried to look very dignified. She pecked at the cabbage in an absent-minded fashion, pretending that it was no treat to her. As a matter of fact, she had been trying to get a taste of cabbage for a long while. And this was the first time she had managed to crawl through the garden fence. "One has to eat something," she murmured.

Jimmy Rabbit smiled slyly. Henrietta Hen couldn't deceive him. He knew that she was as fond of cabbage as he was himself.

"Did you ever hear it said," he asked her suddenly, "that eating too much cabbage causes long ears?"

XIV

EARS--SHORT OR LONG

Henrietta Hen's heart began to thump. She dropped a bit of cabbage out of her bill, letting it fall as if it burned her. And usually she was very careful as to her table-manners. "Goodness!" she said to Jimmy Rabbit, who was busily munching cabbage in Farmer Green's garden. "You frighten me!"

He had just asked her this strange question: "Did you ever hear it said that eating too much cabbage causes long ears?" And Henrietta Hen didn't want long ears. She knew they would be sure to spoil her beauty.

Jimmy Rabbit had no time to say anything more to Henrietta Hen. Although he had not finished his luncheon he left the garden suddenly--and in great haste. For old dog Spot began barking just beyond the fence; and Jimmy Rabbit always wanted to get as far from that sound as he could.

When Spot scurried into the cabbage-patch a little later Henrietta Hen called to him.

"What is it?" he asked her impatiently. "I'm in a great hurry. I don't like to stop."

"This is a very important matter," said Henrietta Hen. "Do you like cabbage?" she demanded.

"Cabbage?" he repeated after her as a puzzled look came over his face.

"You needn't act so surprised," Henrietta told him coldly. "You didn't come running into the garden for nothing. And I have reason to believe that you intended to eat some of Farmer Green's cabbages."

"What's your reason?" old Spot inquired.

"You have long ears," said Henrietta.

"Nonsense!" cried Spot. "What a person eats doesn't make his ears either long or short."

"Are you sure of that?" Henrietta Hen wanted to know.

"I've never eaten cabbage in all my life," he declared.

Still she couldn't rid herself of her fears.

"Perhaps," she said, "if you had eaten it your ears would have grown twice as long as they are now."

He shook his head. "I don't think so," he muttered.

"There's only one way to find out," Henrietta announced. "Eat a lot of cabbage--all you can! And we'll soon see whether your ears are growing longer."

But old dog Spot refused flatly to do anything of the sort. He said that his ears suited him quite well, just as they were.

"What!" Henrietta cried. "Wouldn't you eat cabbage to oblige a lady?"

Old Spot said he was sorry; but he had no liking for cabbage.

"How can you tell if you've never tasted it?" she asked.

He made no answer to that question. Instead, he asked her one of his own.

"Would you like long ears?" he inquired.

"Certainly not!" she cried.

"How can you tell if you've never tried wearing any?" he demanded.

"Don't be stupid!" she snapped. "None of my family wears ears that can be seen. What a sight I'd be with long ears! Ears are very ugly things, and I only hope that I haven't eaten so much cabbage that mine will begin to grow.... Do you suppose they'd hang down like yours or stick up like Jimmy Rabbit's? He didn't say anything about that."

Old dog Spot let out a howl.

"Jimmy Rabbit!" he growled. "Was he talking with you just before I arrived?"

"Yes!" said Henrietta. "It was he that asked me if I had ever heard that eating cabbage made a person's ears grow."

"I might have known that it was that young Rabbit who put such a silly notion into your head," Spot grumbled. "If you hadn't stopped me I'd have stopped _him_ by this time.... But it's too late now."

"You don't suppose he was joking, do you?" Henrietta inquired.

"Of course he was," said Spot--and none too pleasantly.

"Well," Henrietta mused, as she pecked at a cabbage-leaf, "I must say that I think the joke's on you."

XV

HENRIETTA'S FRIGHT

When the old horse Ebenezer stood in his stall in the barn he was always glad to talk with anybody that came along.

Henrietta Hen sometimes strolled into the horse-barn to see if she could find a little grain that had spilled on the floor. So it came about that she and Ebenezer had many a chat together. Henrietta had no great opinion of horses. She thought that they had altogether more than their share of grain.

But she was willing to pass the time of day with Ebenezer, because he let her walk right into his stall and pick up tidbits that had dropped upon the floor beneath his manger.

It was on such an occasion, on a summer's day, that he said to her with a sigh, "Haying's going to begin to-morrow."

Henrietta Hen remarked that she wasn't at all interested in the news. "And I don't see why you should sigh," she added. "Goodness knows you'll eat your share of the hay--and probably more--before the winter's over."

"It's the work that I'm thinking of," Ebenezer explained. "They'll hitch me to the hayrake and Johnnie Green will drive me all day long in the hot hayfields. I always hate to hear the clatter of the mowing machine," he groaned. "It means that the hayrake will come out of the shed next."

Henrietta Hen caught her breath.

"The mowing machine!" she gasped. "Is Farmer Green going to use the mowing machine now?"

"Certainly!" said Ebenezer. "I hear he's going to harness the bays to it to-morrow morning."

"My! my!" Henrietta wailed. "Isn't there any way I can stop him from doing that?"

"I don't know of any," Ebenezer told her. "I've often felt just as you do about it. There's nobody that dreads hearing the mowing machine more than I do."

"You can't feel the way I do," Henrietta declared.

"On the contrary," the old horse insisted, "I don't see how it can matter to you in the least. _You_ don't have to pull the mowing machine nor the hayrake. Besides, didn't you just tell me that my news about haying didn't interest you?"

"But it does!" Henrietta cried. "I was mistaken. It means _everything_ to me. It's the worst news I ever heard in all my life."

Old Ebenezer looked down at her with mild astonishment on his long, honest face.

"Why is it bad news?" he inquired. "If you'll tell me, perhaps I can help you."

So Henrietta Hen explained her difficulty. Whatever it was, it amazed Ebenezer. And he had to admit that he could think of no way out of the trouble.

"It was very, very careless of you," he told Henrietta. Then suddenly he had a happy thought. "Cheer up!" he cried. "If Farmer Green sits on them, maybe they'll hatch."

"Hatch!" she groaned. "They'll _break_!"

And she ran out of the stall and hurried into the yard.

She was just in time to hear Farmer Green calling to his son Johnnie.

"Look here!" said he. "I started to oil the mowing machine so I could use it to-morrow; and just see what I found in the seat!"

Johnnie Green came a-running. And there in the seat of the mowing machine, nestling in the hay which had been put there for a cushion the summer before, three eggs greeted Johnnie's eyes.