"I tell you I saw them with my own eyes," said old White Hen, standing on one foot with her neck outstretched and her bill wide open. "One was pink and the other was blue. They were just like any other egg as far as size, but the color--think of it--pink and blue eggs. Whoever could have laid them?" Old White Hen looked from one to the other of the group of hens and chickens as they stood around her.
"Well, I know that I didn't," said Speckled Hen.
"You needn't look at me," said Brown Hen. "I lay large white eggs, and you know it, every one of you. They are the best eggs in the yard, if I do say it."
"Oh, I would not say that," said White Hen. "You seem to forget that the largest egg ever seen in this yard was laid by me, and it was a little on the brown color; white eggs are all well enough, but give me a brown tone for quality."
"You never laid such a large egg as that but once," replied Brown Hen, "and everybody thought it was a freak egg, so the least said about it the better, it seems to me."
"It is plain to understand how you feel about that egg," said White Hen, "but it does not help us to find out who laid the blue and pink eggs."
"Where did you see them?" asked Speckled Hen.
"On the table, by the window of the farm-house," said old White Hen. "I flew up on a barrel that stood under the window, and then I stretched my neck and looked in the window, and there on the table, in a little basket, I saw those strange-looking eggs."
"Perhaps the master had bought them for some one of us to sit on and hatch out," said Brown Hen.
"Well, I, for one, refuse to do it," said White Hen. "I think it would be an insult to put those gaudy things into our nests."