“I believe that the family is going to move into town,” said the White Cock, who always expected sad things to happen. Even when there was not a cloud in the sky, he was sure that it would rain the next day. That was probably because he was careless about what he ate. The Shanghai Cock said that he did not take half gravel enough, and any sensible fowl will tell you that he cannot be truly happy unless he eats enough gravel.
“What will ever become of us,” asked the Hens, “if the family moves to town? It is their business to stay here and take care of us.”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” crowed the Young Cock. “Let them go. I can have a good enough time in the fields finding my own food.”
The Pullets looked at him admiringly. “But who will take care of us?” they asked.
“I will,” said he, holding his head very high. And that was exactly what they wanted him to say, although each of them would rather have had him say it to her alone.
“There will be nobody left to set traps for the Rats and the Weasels,” said an old Hen, who had seen much of the ways of poultry-yards. “And if our Chickens have the gapes, who will make horse-hair loops and pull the little Worms out of their throats? I have always said that it was well to have people living in the farmhouse.”
“Well,” said the Brown Hen, “I hope that if they go they will take the Horses with them. There is no pleasure in life when one is all the time afraid of being run over. You know what happened this morning, when I had started to take my dust bath. I spoke to the Horses about it afterward, and Bobs was very polite, but that didn’t give me the bath which he and that silly young Snip had spoiled. And I do not feel at all like myself without a bath.”
“Take it now then,” said the Shanghai Cock, who never bothered to be polite. “You ought to be able to get it in while the team is going to town and back.”
“No,” said the Brown Hen, firmly, “it is too far past the time when I should have taken it. I was never one of those Hens who can wallow from morning until night. I need my bath and I ought to have it, but when I have been kept from it so long I simply have to go without it.”
The other Hens said nothing. In nearly every poultry-yard there is one fowl who is so fussy as to make everybody else uncomfortable. The rest become used to it after a while and do not answer back when she talks so.