There was once a hen with brown speckled wings and a short black tail. She stood in a shop window, on a bit of wood covered with green baize, and kept watch over the eggs with which the window was filled.

“I may be stuffed,” said the hen, “but I hope I know my duty for all that!”

There were many eggs, and some of them were very different from the eggs to which she had been accustomed; but she did not see what she could do about that.

“Their mothers must be people of very vulgar tastes,” she said, “or else fashions have changed sadly. In my day a hen who laid red or blue or green eggs would have been chased out of the barnyard; but the world has gone steadily backward since then, I have reason to think.”

She was silent, and fixed her eyes on a large white egg which had been recently placed in the window.

There was something strange about that egg. She had never seen one like it. No hen that ever lived could lay such a monstrous thing; even a turkey could not produce one of half the size.

Whence could it have come? She remembered stories that she had heard, when a pullet, of huge birds as tall as the hen-house, called ostriches. Could this be an ostrich egg? If it was, she could not possibly be expected to take care of the chick.

“The idea!” she said. “Why, it will be as big as I am!”

At this moment a hand appeared in the window. It was the shopkeeper’s hand, and it set down before the hen an object which filled her with amazement and consternation.

It looked like an egg: that is, it was shaped and coloured like an egg; but from the top, which was broken, protruded a head which certainly was not that of a chicken.

The head wore a black hat; it had a round, rosy face, something like the shopkeeper’s, and what could be seen of the shoulders was clad in a bottle-green coat, with a bright-red cravat tied under the pink chin.

The little black eyes met the hen’s troubled glance with a bright and cheerful look.

“Good-morning!” said the creature. “It’s a fine day!”

“What are you?” asked the hen, rather sternly. “I don’t approve of your appearance at all. Do you call yourself a chicken, pray?”

“Why, no,” said the thing, looking down at itself. “I—I am a man, I think. Eh? I have a hat, you see.”

“No, you are not!” cried the hen, in some excitement. “Men don’t come out of eggs. You ought to be a chicken, but there is some mistake somewhere. Can’t you get back into your shell, and—a—change your clothes, or do something?”

“I’m afraid not,” said the little man (for he was a man). “I don’t seem to be able to move much; and besides, I don’t think I was meant for a chicken. I don’t feel like a chicken.”

“Oh, but look at your shell!” cried the poor hen. “Consider the example you are setting to all these eggs! There’s no knowing what they will hatch into if they see this sort of thing going on. I will lend you some feathers,” she added, coaxingly, “and perhaps I can scratch round and find you a worm, though my legs are pretty stiff. Come, be a good chicken, and get back into your shell!”

“I don’t like worms,” said the little man, decidedly. “And I am not a chicken, I tell you. Did you ever see a chicken with a hat on?”

“N—no,” replied the hen, doubtfully, “I don’t think I ever did.”

“Well, then!” said the little man, triumphantly.

And the hen was silent, for one cannot argue well when one is stuffed.

The little man now looked about him in a leisurely way, and presently his eyes fell on the great white egg.

“Is that your egg?” he asked, politely.

The hen appreciated the compliment, but replied, rather sadly, “No, it is not. I do not even know whose egg it is. I expect to watch over the eggs in a general way, and I hope I know my duty; but I really do not feel as if I could manage a chicken of that size. Besides,” she added, with a glance at the black hat and the bottle-green coat, “how do I know that it will be a chicken? It may hatch out a—a—sea-serpent, for aught I know.”

“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.