Among the Farmyard People | Page 6

and paused every few minutes to look around in her jerky
way and see whether the other fowls were listening. Once she even
stood on her left foot right in the pathway of the Shanghai Cock, and
cackled into his very ears.
Everybody pretended not to hear her. The people in the poultry-yard
did not like the Dorking Hen very well. They said that she put on airs.
Perhaps she did. She certainly talked a great deal of the place from
which she and the Dorking Cock came. They had come in a small cage
from a large poultry farm, and the Dorking Hen never tired of telling
about the wonderful, noisy ride that they took in a dark car drawn by a
great, black, snorting creature. She said that this creature's feet grew on
to his sides and whirled around as he ran, and that he breathed out of
the top of his head. When the fowls first heard of this, they were much
interested, but after a while they used to walk away from her, or make
believe that they saw Grasshoppers whom they wanted to chase.
When she found that people were not listening to her, she cackled
louder than ever, "Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! Look at the egg--the egg--the
egg--the egg that I have laid."
"Is there any particular reason why we should look at the egg--the
egg--the egg--the egg that you have laid?" asked the Shanghai Cock,
who was the grumpiest fowl in the yard.
Now, usually if the Dorking Hen had been spoken to in this way, she

would have ruffled up her head feathers and walked away, but this time
she had news to tell and so she kept her temper. "Reason?" she cackled.
"Yes indeed! It is the finest egg that was ever laid in this poultry-yard."
"Hear her talk!" said a Bantam Hen. "I think it is in very poor taste to
lay such large eggs as most of the Hens do here. Small ones are much
more genteel."
"She must forget an egg that I laid a while ago with two yolks," said a
Shanghai Hen. "That was the largest egg ever laid here, and I have
always wished that I had hatched it. A pair of twin chickens would
have been so interesting."
"Well," said the Dorking Hen, who could not keep still any longer,
"small eggs may be genteel and large ones may be interesting, but my
last one is bee-autiful."
"Perhaps you'd just as soon tell us about it as to brag without telling?"
grumbled the Shanghai Cock. "I suppose it is grass color, or sky color,
or hay color, or speckled, like a sparrow's egg."
"No," answered the Dorking Hen, "it is white, but it is shiny."
"Shiny!" they exclaimed. "Who ever heard of a shiny egg?"
"Nobody," she replied, "and that is why it is so wonderful."
"Don't believe it," said the Shanghai Cock, as he turned away and
began scratching the ground.
Now the Dorking Hen did get angry. "Come to see it, if you don't
believe me," she said, as she led the others into the Hen-house.
She flew up to the row of boxes where the Hens had their nests, and
picked her way along daintily until she reached the farthest one. "Now
look," said she.
One by one the fowls peeped into the box, and sure enough, there it lay,
a fine, shiny, white egg. The little Bantam, who was really a jolly,

kind-hearted creature, said, "Well, it is a beauty. I should be proud of it
myself."
"It is whiter than I fancy," said the Shanghai Cock, "but it certainly
does shine."
"I shall hatch it," said the Dorking Hen, very decidedly. "I shall hatch it
and have a beautiful Chicken with shining feathers. I shall not hatch all
the eggs in the nest, but roll this one away and sit on it."
"Perhaps," said one of her friends, "somebody else may have laid it
after all, and not noticed. You know it is not the only one in the nest."
"Pooh!" said the Dorking Hen. "I guess I know! I am sure it was not
there when I went to the nest and it was there when I left. I must have
laid it."
The fowls went away, and she tried to roll the shiny one away from the
other eggs, but it was slippery and very light and would not stay where
she put it. Then she got out of patience and rolled all the others out of
the nest. Two of them fell to the floor and broke, but she did not care.
"They are nothing but common ones, anyway," she said.
When the farmer's wife came to gather the eggs she pecked at her and
was very cross. Every day she