nked her politely for thinking of his health.

"I always take good care of myself," he assured her.

"It looks like rain this minute," she said as she cast an anxious glance
at the sky. "Hadn't you better run into the barn?"

He thought otherwise--and said as much.

"You ought to wear rubbers every day," she chided him, as she went away
again.

Soon Henrietta returned once more to urge the Rooster to carry an
umbrella. And it wasn't long after that when she came bustling up to him
and informed him that a warm muffler about his throat wouldn't be amiss.

There seemed to be no end to her suggestions. And though at first the
Rooster had liked to hear them (without having any idea of following
them) after a time Henrietta's attentions began to annoy him.

"Great cracked corn!" he exclaimed. "This Henrietta Hen is getting to be
a pest."

IX

HAUGHTY HENRIETTA

Feeling as important as she did, Henrietta Hen liked to have her own way.
She said that she couldn't be expected to do just as others wished.

"I'll take orders from nobody," she often declared. "And if I lay eggs
for Farmer Green I shall lay them when and where I please."

Henrietta took special delight in laying her eggs in out-of-the-way
places. She was never content to lay two in the same nest.

"If they left them for me perhaps I'd feel differently," she explained to
her neighbors. "But Johnnie Green gathers every egg that he can find. And
if he takes my eggs I'll make him hunt for them, anyhow."

The older, more staid hens shook their heads when Henrietta talked like
that. They told her she was ungrateful.

"Farmer Green gives you a snug home and plenty of food," they reminded
her. "And the least you can do is to repay him. You ought not to make
trouble by hiding your eggs."

But Henrietta Hen couldn't--or wouldn't--agree with them.

"It's all very well for you to talk," she retorted. "If my eggs were
undersized I shouldn't mind losing them as fast as I laid them. But I lay
the biggest and finest eggs to be had. So it's only natural that I should
like to have at least _one_ around to look at--and to show to callers."

Now, there were plenty of other hens in the flock that laid eggs exactly
as big--or even bigger--than Henrietta Hen's. Some of them told her as
much. Yet it did them no good to talk to her. She wouldn't believe that
there were any eggs in the world to compare with hers. So her neighbors
learned after a while that they mi