THERE was once a hen with brown speckled wings and a short black tail.
She stood in a shop window, on a bit of wood covered with green baize,
and kept watch over the eggs with which the window was filled.
“I may be stuffed,” said the hen, “but I hope I know my duty for all
that!”
There were many eggs, and some of them were very different from the
eggs to which she had been accustomed; but she did not see what she
could do about that.
“Their mothers must be people of very vulgar tastes,” she said, “or
else fashions have changed sadly. In my day a hen who laid red or blue
or green eggs would have been chased out of the barnyard; but the world
has gone steadily backward since then, I have reason to think.”
She was silent, and fixed her eyes on a large white egg which had been
recently placed in the window.
There was something strange about that egg. She had never seen one like
it. No hen that ever lived could lay such a monstrous thing; even a
turkey could not produce one of half the size.
Whence could it have come? She remembered stories that she had
heard, when a pullet, of huge birds as tall as the hen-house, called
ostriches. Could this be an ostrich egg? If it was, she could not
possibly be expected to take care of the chick.
“The idea!” she said. “Why, it will be as big as I am!”
At this moment a hand appeared in the window. It was the shopkeeper’s
hand, and it set down before the hen an object which filled her with
amazement and consternation.
It _looked_ like an egg: that is, it was shaped and coloured like
an egg; but from the top, which was broken, protruded a head which
certainly was not that of a chicken.
The head wore a black hat; it had a round, rosy face, something like
the shopkeeper’s, and what could be seen of the shoulders was clad in a
bottle-green coat, with a bright-red cravat tied under the pink chin.
The little black eyes met the hen’s troubled glance with a bright and
cheerful look.
“Good-morning!” said the creature. “It’s a fine day!”
“What are you?” asked the hen, rather sternly. “I don’t approve of your
appearance at all. Do you call yourself a chicken, pray?”
“Why, no,” said the thing, looking down at itself. “I—I am a man, I
think. Eh? I have a hat, you see.”
“No, you are not!” cried the hen, in some excitement. “Men don’t come
out of eggs. You _ought_ to be a chicken, but there is some mistake
somewhere. Can’t you get back into your shell, and—a—change your
clothes, or do _something_?”
“I’m afraid not,” said the little man (for he _was_ a man). “I don’t
seem to be able to move much; and besides, I don’t think I was meant
for a chicken. I don’t _feel_ like a chicken.”
“Oh, but look at your shell!” cried the poor hen. “Consider the example
you are setting to all these eggs! There’s no knowing _what_ they will
hatch into if they see this sort of thing going on. I will lend you
some feathers,” she added, coaxingly, “and perhaps I can scratch round
and find you a worm, though my legs are pretty stiff. Come, be a good
chicken, and get back into your shell!”
“I don’t like worms,” said the little man, decidedly. “And I am _not_
a chicken, I tell you. Did you ever see a chicken with a hat on?”
“N—no,” replied the hen, doubtfully, “I don’t think I ever did.”
“Well, then!” said the little man, triumphantly.
And the hen was silent, for one cannot argue well when one is stuffed.
The little man now looked about him in a leisurely way, and presently
his eyes fell on the great white egg.
“Is that _your_ egg?” he asked, politely.
The hen appreciated the compliment, but replied, rather sadly, “No,
it is not. I do not even know whose egg it is. I expect to watch over
the eggs in a general way, and I hope I know my duty; but I really do
not feel as if I _could_ manage a chicken of that size. Besides,” she
added, with a glance at the black hat and the bottle-green coat, “how
do I know that it will be a chicken? It may hatch out a—a—sea-serpent,
for aught I know.”
“Would you like to make sure?” asked the little man, who really had a
kind heart, and would have been a chicken if he could. “There seems to
be a crack where this ribbon is tied on. Shall I peep through and see
what is inside?”
“I shall be truly grateful if you will!” cried the hen. “I assure you
it weighs upon my mind.”
The little man leaned over against the great white egg, and took a long
look through the crack.
“Compose yourself!” he said, at last, looking at the hen with an
anxious expression. “I fear this will be a blow to you. There are five
white rabbits inside this egg!”
The speckled hen rolled her glass eyes wildly about and tried to
cackle, but in vain.
“This is too much!” she said. “This is more than I can bear. Tell
the shopkeeper that he must get some one else to mind his eggs, for a
barnyard where the eggs hatch into rabbits is no place for me.”
And with one despairing cluck, the hen fell off the bit of wood and lay
at full length on the shelf.
“It is a pity for people to be sensitive,” said the little man to
himself, as he surveyed her lifeless body. “Why are not five rabbits as
good as one chicken, I should like to know? After all, it is only a man
who can understand these matters.”
And he cocked his black hat, and settled his red necktie, and thought
very well of himself.