But the old gobbler was saved his trouble, for in a few minutes he saw Gray Hen coming down the path toward him. As she came up to him he said: "What a miserable feeling morning this, Mrs. Hen; my feathers will none of them lie straight, and every worm that I have tasted for breakfast has been bitter."
"You are quite right," said Gray Hen. "It is just like all the mornings recently, uncomfortable and disagreeable, and there does not seem to be any promise of anything better."
"You are quite right," said the gobbler. "What the gander and the duck see in the present to be so satisfied with I don't understand, and as to the future, I don't know why we should expect any more of that than the past."
"I have always felt," said Gray Hen, "that you, Mr. Gobbler, never got half your deserts in this barnyard. Everybody seems to think that the rooster, because he crows every morning at sunup, is the wisest bird in the yard, but as for me, I have always held you in greater esteem and have often spoken of the nobility of your looks and the regal way in which you walk about the place. If I had any voice in the matter I should suggest that you be recognized as superior to the rooster. But, you see, the hens have nothing to say, although some day I feel sure that it will be different."
"You are very kind," said the gobbler, "and I feel as you do, while I have no wish to be ruler of the yard, that the hens should have more to say. You should at least have independence and do as you like."
"Oh, I have determined on that already," said Gray Hen, and she told him how she had decided to lay no more eggs and to scratch as little as she had to.
"Well," said the gobbler, "I must be off and see that none of those turkey hens get so far into the wood that they cannot find their way back again. I certainly gave the kind of advice she wanted," he said, when he had got out of her hearing, "and that was easier than getting into an argument. And, besides that, discontented people and animals are always so much more comfortable if they think others are just as unhappy as they are."
Old Gray Hen, however, was as good as her word. She stopped laying eggs and the amount of gravel that she scratched was scarcely worth mentioning. She stole worms from the younger chickens, who were too polite to punish a hen so old as she was, and, altogether, she became a general nuisance to all the rest of the barnyard flock.
They could not protect themselves, but Farmer Johnson, walking through the yard one day, noticed that the Old Gray Hen's toes had grown to a most unusual length. "I guess she doesn't do much scratching," he said as he passed along, "and I suspect she doesn't lay many eggs. I must ask mother about it when I get back to the house."
"No," said Mother Johnson, when he asked her, "I haven't found an egg in Gray Hen's nest for a month or more."