"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 Coon was in the henhouse. And she would squawk right out and start another commotion.