Chapter 24

WINNING FIRST PRIZE



Henrietta Hen was waiting as patiently as she could for the fair to come to an end. She tried to close her ears to the boasts of her neighbors on either side of her, that they were going to win the first prize. She had heard too many unpleasant remarks about herself to have even the slightest hope of winning any prize at all--let alone the first.

"Anyhow, we'll be going home tonight," Henrietta said to herself. "And I'll never, never, never come to another fair. I'll go and hide 'way up high in the haymow where they can't find me before I'll spend another week in a place like this."

While she was muttering under her breath like that some men came up to her pen. And Henrietta Hen promptly squatted down in the furthest corner of it, hoping they wouldn't say anything disagreeable about her. She felt that she had already heard about all she could stand. She didn't even look at her callers. And soon they moved away.

Then Henrietta glanced up. She noticed something blue dangling from the front of her pen. And there was a greater commotion than ever on all sides of her.

"What is it?" she cried. "What has happened?"

Neighbor Number 1, on her right, shot a spiteful look at her.

"Those stupid judges!" she spluttered. "They've made a terrible blunder. They've gone and given you and your chicks the first prize. And of course it was meant for me and mine!"

"It wasn't!" screamed Neighbor Number 2 (on Henrietta's left). "That prize was intended for me and my children!"

"Who won second and third?" cried a noisy hen from across the way.

"They're both at the other end of the hall!" somebody shrieked.

"It's an outrage! It isn't fair! We've been cheated!" Henrietta Hen's nearest neighbors clamored. But nobody paid any attention to them.

As for Henrietta, she didn't quite know how to act. She had intended, when she left home, to do a good deal of strutting back and forth in her pen, with now and then a pause to preen herself, to make sure that she looked her best. But somehow she no longer cared to put on grand airs, as of old. She remembered that some of the other hens at the fair had been haughty and proud and had smoothed their feathers, declaring boldly that they expected to win the first prize.

Henrietta had heard it said that fine feathers don't make fine birds. And she knew at last what that meant. It meant that gay clothes and lofty ways and boastful talk were of no account at all.

So Henrietta tried to behave as if nothing unusual had happened. She told her chicks that they were going home that evening, and that she would be glad to be back on the farm again, among plain home-folks.

At last Johnnie Green and his father came to load Henrietta and her family