The happy Turkey mother paused on her way to the meadows with her flock. She was a very patient creature, and would never have dared say anything of the sort to the Gobbler when he was free, but now she decided to say what she wished for once. “Thank you very much for telling us about the fine food outside,” said she. “We shall soon be enjoying it. We shall first try the lower meadow and then the upper one. After that we shall hunt for those delicious Bugs which you say may be found by the roadside. Probably we shall find plenty of dandelion, cress, and mustard leaves, with a few Ants or nettles to give flavor. It is really very fine outside.”
[THREE CHICKENS RUN AWAY]
One would think that with such a good mother as the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen, Chickens should have been contented to mind her and follow wherever she went, and usually hers did. One day, however, two of the brothers coaxed their good little sister to go with them to visit the Chickens at the farm across the road. The brothers had teased and teased their mother to let them go there, but she had always refused.
“Why?” they said.
“Because,” answered the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen, “you have enough room and enough playmates right here at home, and I know that you are safe and well here. I do not know what might happen to you there.”
“Oh, why can’t we go?” teased the brothers, who had just been given an answer to that same question, and were very rude to keep on asking it.
Of course the Barred Plymouth Rock Hen had had too much experience with Chickens to reply again to a question which should not have been asked the second time, and might better not have been asked the first. So she just turned her back and walked off, clucking to her brood as she went. The brothers who had been teasing did not like that at all, and they put their naughty little heads together and decided to run away.