He took the crate down and opened it carefully. The three fowls that walked out looked almost exactly alike. All had very smooth and soft coats of black feathers covered with small round white spots. They were shaped quite like Turkeys, but were much smaller, with gray-brown legs, and heads which were not feathered at all. The skin of their faces and necks was red, and they had small wattles at the corners of their mouths. Bristle-like feathers stood out straight around the upper part of their necks, and below these were soft gray feathers which covered the neck and part of the chest. They walked directly toward the barnyard, where some of the farm fowls were picking up an early dinner. “Ca-mac!” said they “Ca-mac! Ca-mac! We want some too.”
Now the farm fowls were not especially polite, not having come of fine families or been taught good manners when they were Chickens, yet they did not at all like to have newcomers speak to them in this way. They noticed it all the more, because when the White Plymouth Rocks came they had acted so very differently. They stepped a little to one side, giving the Guinea-fowls enough room in which to scratch and pick around as they had been doing, but they did not say much to them.
The Gobbler was strutting back and forth among the smaller fowls. He disliked living with them as much as he had to now, but the Hen Turkeys would have nothing to say to him because he annoyed their Chicks. They went off with their children and left him alone, and, as he wanted company of some sort, he took what he could get. He thought it might be a good plan to make friends with the Guinea-fowls.
“Good-morning,” said he. “Have you come here to stay?”
“We shall stay if we like it,” answered the Guinea-Cock. “We always do what we like best.”
“Humph!” said the Shanghai Cock to himself. “Remarkable fowls! Wonder what the Man will think about that.”
“I hope you will like it,” said the Gobbler, who was so lonely that he really tried hard to be agreeable. “I understand quite how you feel about doing as you like. I always prefer to do what I prefer.”
“We do it,” remarked one of the Guinea-Hens, as she chased the Brown Hen away from the spot where she had been feeding, and swallowed a fat Worm which the Brown Hen had just uncovered.
“Yes,” said the other Guinea-Hen, “I guess we are just as good as anybody else.”