n. "That was the largest egg ever laid here, and I have
always wished that I had hatched it. A pair of twin chickens would have
been so interesting."

"Well," said the Dorking Hen, who could not keep still any longer,
"small eggs may be genteel and large ones may be interesting, but my
last one is bee-autiful."

"Perhaps you'd just as soon tell us about it as to brag without
telling?" grumbled the Shanghai Cock. "I suppose it is grass color, or
sky color, or hay color, or speckled, like a sparrow's egg."

"No," answered the Dorking Hen, "it is white, but it is shiny."

"Shiny!" they exclaimed. "Who ever heard of a shiny egg?"

"Nobody," she replied, "and that is why it is so wonderful."

"Don't believe it," said the Shanghai Cock, as he turned away and began
scratching the ground.

Now the Dorking Hen did get angry. "Come to see it, if you don't believe
me," she said, as she led the others into the Hen-house.

She flew up to the row of boxes where the Hens had their nests, and
picked her way along daintily until she reached the farthest one. "Now
look," said she.

One by one the fowls peeped into the box, and sure enough, there it
lay, a fine, shiny, white egg. The little Bantam, who was really a
jolly, kind-hearted creature, said, "Well, it is a beauty. I should be
proud of it myself."

"It is whiter than I fancy," said the Shanghai Cock, "but it certainly
does shine."

"I shall hatch it," said the Dorking Hen, very decidedly. "I shall hatch
it and have a beautiful Chicken with shining feathers. I shall not hatch
all the eggs in the nest, but roll this one away and sit on it."

"Perhaps," said one of her friends, "somebody else may have laid it
after all, and not noticed. You know it is not the only one in the
nest."

"Pooh!" said the Dorking Hen. "I guess I know! I am sure it was not
there when I went to the nest and it was there when I left. I must have
laid it."

The fowls went away, and she tried to roll the shiny one away from the
other eggs, but it was slippery and very light and would not stay where
she put it. Then she got out of patience and rolled all the others out
of the nest. Two of them fell to the floor and broke, but she did not
care. "They are nothing but common ones, anyway," she said.

When the farmer's wife came to gather the eggs she pecked at her and was
very cross. Every day she did this, and at last the woman let her alone.
Every-day she told the other fowls what a wonderful C