"I would like very much to hear the story," your Aunt Amy said, and she spoke the truth, for thus far Mrs. Goose had been most entertaining.

"It's kind of you to say so," Mrs. Goose replied with a smirk. "If I keep on at this rate you'll think I like to talk as well as Mamma Speckle does; but I've heard of you so often from our people around here, that it seemed as if I must have a whole lot of stories to tell, else you'd say I wasn't much of anybody after all. But about Mr. Dorking Rooster: it seems that one night he couldn't sleep, on account of having eaten too much, and for the first time in his life he saw the moon and the stars.

"The next day, when he was going across the front yard, he saw one of those large rubber balls, painted in bright colors, such as Mr. Man's children use to play with in the house, and after looking it over carefully he decided that he knew what it was.

Mr. Dorking Finds the Moon

"'This must be the moon I saw last night,' he said to himself; 'but it don't seem to shine as it did then. Perhaps it doesn't give out any light till after sunset, so I'll wait till then to see it.'

"So Mr. Dorking sat down and waited. The sun set, and black clouds covered the sky, but, yet the ball did not shine. All the other chickens had gone to roost hours before; but Mr. Dorking kept on watching. It began to rain; the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled. The rooster was wet to the skin, and terribly frightened.

"'I'll save the moon,' he cried, and picking up the ball in his beak, which wasn't an easy task, he ran as fast as he could to the hen-house; but when he got there the storm had cleared away. Looking up, Mr. Dorking saw the moon in the sky, and throwing the ball into the house, he cried out to his wife:

"'What kind of a thing is this, anyway? I've been lugging it around for an hour or more, and now there's another moon come to take its place.'

"'Come straight up here to your roost, you foolish old thing.' Mrs. Dorking said angrily. 'If you had half as much sense as Mr. Monkey, you could have taken the children and me on a picnic, instead of fooling your time away with a rubber ball.'

"What did she mean by 'having as much sense as Mr. Monkey,'" your Aunt Amy asked, and Mrs. Goose replied: