here are the eggs, round
and smooth and warm.

Carolus had become a fine noble-looking cock with long curved
tail-feathers which shone with metallic colors in the sun; but oh, the
trouble he gave me!

Right at the foot of our hill lives Madam Land in a little old gray
house. Madam Land keeps hens, too. Well! nothing would do but that
Carolus must go down to her chicken-yard. It wasn't half as nice as our
kitchen-garden but he couldn't keep away from it a single day.

The instant the hens were let out in the morning Carolus made a dash
down the hill, flying and running straight to Madam Land's gate. If the
gate were not open, Carolus flew over the board fence and down into the
midst of Madam Land's flock of hens. I called and I coaxed; I scolded
him and chased him. No, thank you! Carolus crowed and squawked, and flew
up on the board fence; he put his head on one side and looked down at
me, and no sooner was I well out of the way than he was in the yard
again and there he stayed all day.

Every single night I had to go down to get him after he had gone to
roost with Madam Land's hens. Then there was a racket, I can tell you!
The hens cackled and squawked and flew down from the roost, even hitting
against my face as they flew. You couldn't hear yourself think in Madam
Land's hen-house.

But I took firm hold of my good Carolus. He kicked and struggled, but I
held his shining warm body close to me and could feel his heart beating
and hammering as I ran home with him.

Every single night this performance had to be gone through, and every
single night Madam Land stood in her kitchen door and scolded when I
went past with Carolus in my arms.

"Oh, yes! he's the pampered one--oh, yes, he's the one that's getting
fat--he eats enough for four hens--there's surely law and justice to be
had in such cases--yes, indeed, he's the pampered one." I could hear
Madam Land's voice following me all the way up our hill.

Madam Land herself doesn't look as if she were pampered. Her husband is
a boatman. She is frightfully saving. They say in the town that Madam
Land boils only three potatoes for dinner every day, "two potatoes for
Land, one for the maid, and I don't need any," says Madam Land. And only
think, day after day she had to see that big Carolus of ours eating out
of the dish she had filled for her own hens. Any one could understand
Madam Land's being angry.

One day Madam Land came up to our house to complain to Mother abo