The Tale of Henrietta Hen Part 7

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 n.o.body 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.

"They must belong to the speckled hen," Johnnie decided. "I knew she'd stolen her nest again. I couldn't find it anywhere." He picked up the eggs and put them in his hat. "She's a sly one," he said.

That remark made Henrietta Hen somewhat angry. At the same time she was glad that Farmer Green had discovered the eggs before it was too late.

She wouldn't have liked him to sit on them.

It always upset her to see her eggs broken.

XVI

THE ROOSTER UPSET

During the summer Henrietta Hen roamed about the farmyard as she pleased.

To be sure, she always came a-running at feeding time. But except when there was something there to eat, she didn't go near the henhouse. She "stole her nest," to use Johnnie Green's words, now in one place and now in another. And at night she roosted on any handy place in the barn or the haymow, under the carriage-shed or even over the pigpens.

However, when the nights began to grow chilly Henrietta was glad enough to creep into the henhouse with her companions. She always retired early.

And being a good sleeper, she slept usually until the Rooster began to crow towards dawn. Of course now and then some fidgetty hen fancied that she heard a fox prowling about and waked everybody else with her squalls.

Such interruptions upset Henrietta. After the flock had gone to sleep again Henrietta Hen was more than likely to dream that Fatty c.o.o.n was in the henhouse. And she would squawk right out and start another commotion.

Luckily such disturbances didn't happen every night. Often nothing occurred to break the silence of the henhouse. And Henrietta would dream only of pleasant things, such as cracked corn, or crisp cabbage-leaves, or bone meal. After dreams of that sort Henrietta couldn't always be sure, when the Rooster waked her with his crowing, that she hadn't already breakfasted. But she would peck at her breakfast, when feeding time came, and if it tasted good she would know then that the other food had been nothing but a dream.

One night, soon after she had gone back to roost in the henhouse, it seemed to Henrietta that she had scarcely fallen asleep when the Rooster crowed.

She awoke with a start.

"Goodness!" she exclaimed under her breath. "I must have slept soundly, for I haven't dreamed a single dream all night long." Then she noticed that none of the other hens had stirred. "Lazy bones!" Henrietta remarked to the Rooster. "You won't get 'em up in a hurry. They, don't hear you at all."

To her surprise she received no answer.

"He couldn't have heard me," she said to herself. So she repeated her speech in a louder tone. And still the Rooster made no reply. Henrietta couldn't understand it, he was always so polite to the ladies. Could it be that he was snubbing her?

Henrietta grew a bit angry as that thought popped into her head.

"What's the matter?" she snapped. "Have you lost your voice? It was loud enough to wake me up a few moments ago."

Receiving no response whatsoever, Henrietta completely lost her temper.

"I'll see what's wrong with you!" she cackled. And throwing herself off her roost, though it was dark as a pocket in the henhouse, she flung herself upon the perch just opposite, where she knew the Rooster had slept.

It was no wonder that Henrietta Hen blundered in the dark. It was no wonder that she missed her way and stumbled squarely into the Rooster, knocking him headlong on the floor.

He set up a terrible clamor. And he made Henrietta Hen angrier than ever, for he cried out in a loud voice something that would have displeased anybody. "A skunk is after me!" he bawled.

XVII

A SIGN OF RAIN

There was a terrible hubbub in the henhouse. The Rooster squalled so loudly that he waked up every hen in the place. And when they heard him crying that a skunk had knocked him off his roost they were as frightened as he was, and set up a wild cackle. All but Henrietta Hen! She knew there was no skunk there.

"Don't be a goose--er--don't be a gander!" she hissed to the Rooster.

"I'm the one that b.u.mped into you."

The Rooster quickly came to his senses.

"Don't be alarmed, ladies!" he called to the flock. "There's no danger.

There's been a slight mistake." He pretended that he hadn't been scared.

But he had been. And now he was somewhat uneasy about Henrietta Hen. He feared he was in for a scolding from her.