laughed. "Why, what would you
have done all these days if things happened in that way? What would you
have had to think about? What could you have talked about?" The little
Lamb hung his head and asked no more questions.

"What do you think?" he called to a group of Lambs near by. "I'm going
to have one of the men shorten my tail. It is such a bother unless one
does have it done, and mine is so very long!"

THE WONDERFUL SHINY EGG

"CUT-CUT-CA-DAH-CUT! Cut-cut-cut-ca-dah-cut!" called the Dorking Hen, as
she strutted around the poultry-yard. She held her head very high, and
paused every few minutes to look around in her jerky way and see whether
the other fowls were listening. Once she even stood on her left foot
right in the pathway of the Shanghai Cock, and cackled into his very
ears.

Everybody pretended not to hear her. The people in the poultry-yard did
not like the Dorking Hen very well. They said that she put on airs.
Perhaps she did. She certainly talked a great deal of the place from
which she and the Dorking Cock came. They had come in a small cage from
a large poultry farm, and the Dorking Hen never tired of telling about
the wonderful, noisy ride that they took in a dark car drawn by a great,
black, snorting creature. She said that this creature's feet grew on to
his sides and whirled around as he ran, and that he breathed out of the
top of his head. When the fowls first heard of this, they were much
interested, but after a while they used to walk away from her, or make
believe that they saw Grasshoppers whom they wanted to chase.

When she found that people were not listening to her, she cackled louder
than ever, "Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! Look at the egg--the egg--the egg--the
egg that I have laid."

"Is there any particular reason why we should look at the egg--the
egg--the egg--the egg that you have laid?" asked the Shanghai Cock, who
was the grumpiest fowl in the yard.

Now, usually if the Dorking Hen had been spoken to in this way, she
would have ruffled up her head feathers and walked away, but this time
she had news to tell and so she kept her temper. "Reason?" she cackled.
"Yes indeed! It is the finest egg that was ever laid in this
poultry-yard."

"Hear her talk!" said a Bantam Hen. "I think it is in very poor taste to
lay such large eggs as most of the Hens do here. Small ones are much
more genteel."

"She must forget an egg that I laid a while ago with two yolks," said a
Shanghai He