The Tale of Henrietta Hen | Page 2

way about moving to the village to live.
"They think enough of my eggs down there," she would boast. "Boiled, fried, poached, scrambled, or for an omelette--my eggs can't be beaten."
"If the villagers can't beat your eggs they certainly can't use them for omelettes," Polly Plymouth Rock told Henrietta one day. "Everybody knows you have to beat eggs to make an omelette."
Henrietta Hen didn't know what to say to that. It was almost the only time she was ever known to be silent.

II
A FINE FAMILY
Henrietta Hen's neighbors paid little attention to her boasting, because they had to listen to it so often. At last, however, there came a day when she set up such a cackling as they had never heard from her before. She kept calling out at the top of her lungs, "Come-come-come! See-what-I've-got! Come-come-come! See-what-I've-got!" And she acted even more important than ever, until her friends began to say to one another, "What can Henrietta be so proud about? If it's only another egg, she's making a terrible fuss about it."
They decided at last that if they were to have any peace they'd better go and look at whatever it was that Henrietta Hen was squawking about. So they went--in a body--to the place where she had her nest, in the haymow.
When Henrietta caught sight of her visitors she set up a greater clamor than ever.
"Well, well!" cried the oldest of the party, a rather sharp-tongued dame with white feathers. "What's all this hubbub about?" And then they learned what it was that Henrietta wanted them to see.
"Did you ever set eyes on such a fine family?" she demanded as she stepped aside from her nest and let them peer into it.
"A brood of chicks--eh?" said the lady in white. "Well, what's all the noise about?"
Henrietta Hen turned her back on her questioner.
"I knew you'd all want to have a look at these prize youngsters," she said to the rest of the company. "You'll agree with me, of course, that there were never any other chicks as handsome as these."
Henrietta's neighbors all crowded up to gaze upon the soft balls of down.
"This is the first family you've hatched, isn't it?" Polly Plymouth Rock inquired.
Henrietta Hen said that it was her first brood.
Her neighbors wanted to be pleasant. So they told her that her children were as fine youngsters as anybody could ask for. And the old white dame, squinting at the nestlings, said to Henrietta:
"They're the finest you've ever had.... But there's one of them that has a queer look."
All the other visitors tried to hush her up. They didn't want to hurt Henrietta Hen's feelings. It was her first brood of chicks; and they could forgive her for thinking them the best in the whole world. So when they saw that old Whitey intended to be disagreeable they began to cluck their approval of the youngsters, hoping that Henrietta wouldn't notice what Whitey said.
Nor did she. Henrietta Hen was altogether too pleased with herself and her new family to pay much attention to anybody else's remarks.
"I hope," said Henrietta, "that you'll all come to see my family often. As the youngsters grow, I'm sure they'll get handsomer every day."
The neighbors thanked her. And crowding about old Whitey they moved away. Old Whitey just had to go too. She couldn't help spluttering a little.
"What a vain, empty-headed creature Henrietta Hen is!" she exclaimed. "She doesn't know that one of her brood is nothing but a duckling!"

III
WET FEET
Somehow Henrietta Hen never noticed that one of her brood was different from the rest. They were her first youngsters and they all looked beautiful to her.
Just as soon as Henrietta began to take her children for strolls about the farmyard she taught them a number of things. She showed them how to scratch in the dirt for food, how to drink by raising their heads and letting the water trickle down their throats. She bade them beware of hawks--and of Miss Kitty Cat, too. And she was always warning them to keep their feet dry.
"Water's good for nothing except to drink," Henrietta informed her chicks. "Some strange people, like old dog Spot, jump right into it. And how they manage to keep well is more than I can understand. Dust baths are the only safe ones."
So much did she fear water that Henrietta Hen wouldn't even let her children walk in the grass until the sun had dried the morning's dew. And the first sprinkle of rain was enough to send her scurrying for cover, calling frantically for her chicks to hurry.
Now, there was one of her family that always lagged behind when the rain-drops began to fall. And often Henrietta had fairly to drive him away from a puddle of water. She sometimes remarked with a sigh that he gave