Chapter 15 - Page 2

on them, maybe they'll hatch."

"Hatch!" she groaned. "They'll break!"

And she ran out of the stall and hurried into the yard.

She was just in time to hear Farmer Green calling to his son Johnnie.

"Look here!" said he. "I started to oil the mowing machine so I could use it to-morrow; and just see what I found in the seat!"

Johnnie Green came a-running. And there in the seat of the mowing machine, nestling in the hay which had been put there for a cushion the summer before, three eggs greeted Johnnie's eyes.

"They must belong to the speckled hen," Johnnie decided. "I knew she'd stolen her nest again. I couldn't find it anywhere." He picked up the eggs and put them in his hat. "She's a sly one," he said.

That remark made Henrietta Hen somewhat angry. At the same time she was glad that Farmer Green had discovered the eggs before it was too late. She wouldn't have liked him to sit on them.

It always upset her to see her eggs broken.