“Would you like to make sure?” asked the little man, who really had a kind heart, and would have been a chicken if he could. “There seems to be a crack where this ribbon is tied on. Shall I peep through and see what is inside?”
“I shall be truly grateful if you will!” cried the hen. “I assure you it weighs upon my mind.”
The little man leaned over against the great white egg, and took a long look through the crack.
“Compose yourself!” he said, at last, looking at the hen with an anxious expression. “I fear this will be a blow to you. There are five white rabbits inside this egg!”
The speckled hen rolled her glass eyes wildly about and tried to cackle, but in vain.
“This is too much!” she said. “This is more than I can bear. Tell the shopkeeper that he must get some one else to mind his eggs, for a barnyard where the eggs hatch into rabbits is no place for me.”
And with one despairing cluck, the hen fell off the bit of wood and lay at full length on the shelf.
“It is a pity for people to be sensitive,” said the little man to himself, as he surveyed her lifeless body. “Why are not five rabbits as good as one chicken, I should like to know? After all, it is only a man who can understand these matters.”
And he cocked his black hat, and settled his red necktie, and thought very well of himself.