"There is room," said the Chickens, contradicting her. "We have always roosted on here."
"There is not room," said the Black Spanish Hen once more. "How do your feathers grow?"
"Finely," said they.
"They are getting very big," was the answer.
"Do you think the Speckled Hen could cover you all with her wings if she were to try it now?"
The Chickens looked at each other and laughed. They thought it would take three Speckled Hens to cover them.
"But she used to," said the Black Spanish Hen. She did not say anything more. She just looked at the potato-crate and at them and at the potato-crate again. Then she walked off.
After a while one of the Chickens said: "I guess perhaps there isn't room for us all there."
The mischievous one said: "If you little Chickens want to roost there you may. I am too large for that sort of thing." Then he walked up the slanting board to the apple-tree branch and perched there beside the young Shanghais. You should have seen how beautifully he did it. His toes hooked themselves around the branch as though he had always perched there, and he tucked his head under his wing with quite an air. Before long his brothers and sisters came also, and heard him saying to one of his new neighbors, "Oh, yes, I much prefer apple-trees, but when I was a Chicken I used to sleep on a potato-crate."