nnounced. "Eat a lot of
cabbage--all you can! And we'll soon see whether your ears are growing
longer."

But old dog Spot refused flatly to do anything of the sort. He said that
his ears suited him quite well, just as they were.

"What!" Henrietta cried. "Wouldn't you eat cabbage to oblige a lady?"

Old Spot said he was sorry; but he had no liking for cabbage.

"How can you tell if you've never tasted it?" she asked.

He made no answer to that question. Instead, he asked her one of his own.

"Would you like long ears?" he inquired.

"Certainly not!" she cried.

"How can you tell if you've never tried wearing any?" he demanded.

"Don't be stupid!" she snapped. "None of my family wears ears that can be
seen. What a sight I'd be with long ears! Ears are very ugly things, and
I only hope that I haven't eaten so much cabbage that mine will begin to
grow.... Do you suppose they'd hang down like yours or stick up like
Jimmy Rabbit's? He didn't say anything about that."

Old dog Spot let out a howl.

"Jimmy Rabbit!" he growled. "Was he talking with you just before I
arrived?"

"Yes!" said Henrietta. "It was he that asked me if I had ever heard that
eating cabbage made a person's ears grow."

"I might have known that it was that young Rabbit who put such a silly
notion into your head," Spot grumbled. "If you hadn't stopped me I'd have
stopped _him_ by this time.... But it's too late now."

"You don't suppose he was joking, do you?" Henrietta inquired.

"Of course he was," said Spot--and none too pleasantly.

"Well," Henrietta mused, as she pecked at a cabbage-leaf, "I must say
that I think the joke's on you."

XV

HENRIETTA'S FRIGHT

When the old horse Ebenezer stood in his stall in the barn he was always
glad to talk with anybody that came along.

Henrietta Hen sometimes strolled into the horse-barn to see if she could
find a little grain that had spilled on the floor. So it came about that
she and Ebenezer had many a chat together. Henrietta had no great opinion
of horses. She thought that they had altogether more than their share of
grain.

But she was willing to pass the time of day with Ebenezer, because he let
her walk right into his stall and pick up tidbits that had dropped upon
the floor beneath his manger.

It was on such an occasion, on a summer's day, that he said to her with a
sigh, "Haying's going to begin to-morrow."

Henrietta Hen remarked that she wasn't at all interested in