XXIOFF FOR THE FAIR
It seemed to Henrietta Hen that the time for the fair would never come. She had begun to feel somewhat uneasy, because she had talked so much about visiting the fair with her children that it would be very awkward if she didn't go. So she was delighted one day by the noise of hammering and sawing that came from the workbench at the end of the wagon-shed. A merry noise it was, to Henrietta's ears; for she guessed at once what was happening. Farmer Green and his son were building a pen in which she and her family were to ride to the fair!
The news spread like fire in sun-dried grass. Henrietta Hen took pains that it should. She told everybody she saw that she expected to leave at any moment. And she began to say good-by to all her friends.
Since Henrietta didn't start for the fair that day, before nightfall she had bade every one farewell at least a dozen times. And when, the following dawn, Henrietta started the day not by saying "Good morning!" but by bidding her neighbors "Good-by!" once more, they began to think her a bit tiresome.
"What! Haven't you gone yet?" they asked her.
"No! But I expect to leave at any moment," Henrietta told them. She was so excited that she couldn't eat her breakfast. But her chicks had no such trouble. And perhaps it was just as well that HenriettaHen had her hands full looking after them and trying to keep them all under her eye, and spick-and-span for the journey. Otherwise she would have been in more of a flutter than she was.
While Henrietta had an eye on her children, she tried to keep the other on the barn. And after what seemed to her hours of watching and waiting, she saw Johnnie Green lead the old horse Ebenezer out of the door, with his harness on. Henrietta promptly forgot her stately manners. She ran squalling across the farmyard and called to Ebenezer, "Where are you going?"
"I understand that I'm going to the fair," he told her, as Johnnie Green backed him between the thills of a wagon. "Once I would have been hitched to a light buggy, with a sulky tied behind it. But now I've got to take you and yourfamily in this rattlety old contraption."
Henrietta Hen didn't wait to hear any more. She turned and hurried back, to gather her youngsters and bid everybody another farewell.
Amid a great clucking and squawking, Johnnie Green and his father put Henrietta and her chicks into the pen and placed it in the back of the wagon.
"We're all ready!" Henrietta cried to Ebenezer. The old horse didn't even turn his head, for he could see backwards as well as forwards, because he wore no blinders. He made no direct reply to Henrietta, though he gave a sort of grunt, as if the whole affair did not please him. He knew that it was a long distance to the fairgrounds and the road was hilly.
"Shethinks it a lark," he said to the dog Spot, who hung about as if he were waiting for something. "She's lucky,for she won't have to go on her own legs, for miles and miles."
"That's just what I intend to do," Spot informed him. "They don't mean to take me. But I'm going to follow you, right under the wagon, where Johnnie Green and his father can't see me."
So they started off. And they had scarcely passed through the gate when Henrietta began to clamor in her shrillest tones. But nobody paid any heed to her. The wagon clattered off down the road. And old dog Spot smiled to himself as he trotted along beneath it.
"Henrietta just remembered that she forgot to put on her best apron," he chuckled.
XXIIALMOST HOMESICK
Never in all her life had Henrietta Hen seen so many hens and roosters and chicks as she found on every side of her, at the fair. Farmer Green and his son Johnnie had set her pen in the Poultry Hall. And to Henrietta's surprise, none of her new neighbors paid much attention to her and her chicks—at first. She soon decided that there was a reason for this neglect. She made up her mind that she would have to make herself heard amid all that uproar or the others would never know she had arrived.
Luckily Henrietta had a strong voice.She used it to the utmost. And it wasn't long before a huge hen in a pen next hers gave her a bold look and asked, "What are you here for?"
"I've come to get the first prize," Henrietta answered calmly. She had listened carefully to what Farmer Green and Johnnie had said to each other during the journey from the farm. And already she knew something about fairs.
Her new neighbor laughed right in Henrietta's face.
"I don't see how you can win the first prize," she said with a sniff. "I'm going to get the first prize myself. There never was another such fine family as mine." She glanced proudly at her chicks as she spoke. "The best you can hope for," she told Henrietta, "is the second prize. And you'll be lucky if you get the third."
For once Henrietta Hen was at a loss for a retort.
"I don't believe you've ever been at a fair before," her new neighbor observed.
Henrietta admitted faintly that she hadn't.
"Last year I won second prize," said the other. "I'd have had the first if the judges had known their business."
Henrietta Hen began to feel very shaky in her legs. She had expected a different sort of greeting, when she should arrive at the fair. She had thought everybody would exclaim, "Here comes Henrietta Hen! What a fine family of chicks she has! And aren't Mrs. Hen's speckles beautiful?"
And there she was, with nobody paying any heed to her, except the lofty dame in the next pen, who had said nothing very agreeable.
"Oh, dear!" Henrietta sighed. "I wish I'd never left home."
"What's that?" her neighbor inquired in a sharp tone. "You aren't homesick, are you?"
"N-no!" said Henrietta. "But I had expected to win the first prize. And I don't know what my friends will say when I come back home without it."
"Well, everybody can't win it," said her new acquaintance. "Not the same year, anyhow!" And then she looked Henrietta up and down for a few moments, while Henrietta squirmed uneasily. "Where do you come from?" she asked at last.
"I live on Farmer Green's place, in Pleasant Valley," Henrietta informed her.
The lady in the next pen shook her head. "I've never heard of PleasantValley," she remarked, "nor of Farmer Green. He must be small potatoes."
Well, Henrietta was astonished. She began to feel as if she were nobody at all. She had supposed that everybody knew of Pleasant Valley—and of Farmer Green, too. As for the remark, "small potatoes," she didn't understand it at all. So she inquired what it meant.
"It means," said her neighbor, "that Farmer Green can't be of much account."
That speech made Henrietta Hen almost lose her temper.
"Mr. Green," she cried, "is a fine man. And I'll have you know that I wouldn't live anywhere but on his farm!"
XXIIIGETTING ACQUAINTED
Not liking her neighbor on her right, at the fair, Henrietta Hen sidled up to the wire netting on the opposite side of her pen. Peering through it, she examined the person whom she saw just beyond, in a pen of her own.
A very sleek hen was this, who gave Henrietta a slight nod.
"We may as well speak," she said, "since we're to live next to each other for a week."
"A week!" Henrietta groaned. "Shall I have to stay cooped up here as long as that?"
"Yes!" said Neighbor Number 2. "And I don't blame you for feeling as you seem to. A week is a long time for everybody here—except me."
Henrietta Hen didn't understand her.
"I'm going to win the first prize—with my chicks," Neighbor Number 2 announced. "Of coursethat'sworth waiting here a week."
"I don't see howyoucan win the first prize!" Henrietta exclaimed.
"Why not?" demanded the other. And she pressed against the wire netting of her pen and stuck her head through it as far as she could, as if she would have pecked Henrietta had she been able to.
"Because—" Henrietta explained—"because the lady on the other side of me is going to win it."
"Who said so?"
"She did," Henrietta answered.
"Ha! ha!" cackled Neighbor Number 2. "That's a good joke. She hasn't any more chance of winning than—thanyouhave!"
Now, Henrietta Hen couldn't help being puzzled. But whoever might win the first prize, she was sure it couldn't be she. Hadn't her neighbors on either side of her the same as told her that she couldn't win?
Henrietta would have felt quite glum, except that she couldn't very well mope in the midst of the terrific racket all about her. Soon her neighbors—both Number 1 and Number 2—were having loud disputes with the hens in the pens on the further side of them. It seemed as if every hen at the fair had left her manners at home—if she ever had any.
"Goodness!" Henrietta Hen murmured to herself. "If there's a prize, itmust be for the one that can make the most noise."
In a little while throngs of men, women and children crowded into the Poultry Hall. They paused before the pens and looked at the occupants, making remarks that were sometimes full of praise and sometimes slighting.
Henrietta Hen felt terribly uneasy when people began to stop and stare at her. She dreaded to hear what they would say. After the way her next-door neighbors had talked to her she didn't believe anybody would have a word of praise for her.
She soon heard all sorts of remarks about herself. Some said she was too little and some said she was too big; others exclaimed that her legs were too short, while still others declared that they were too long! As these—and many similar—commentsfell upon Henrietta's ears she promptly decided that there wasn't anything about her that was as it should be.
Having always called herself (before she left home) a "speckled beauty," she began to feel very low in her mind. And there was only one thing that kept her from being downright sad. All the sightseers agreed that she had some pretty chicks.
Henrietta couldn't help wishing that they had a different mother—one that was worthy of them.
XXIVWINNING 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 beforeI'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 somehowshe 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 into the wagon.
"Well," said the old horse Ebenezer toHenrietta. "Did you enjoy the races?"
"I didn't have a chance to see them," she replied.
"That's a pity," he told her. And then he asked her, "What's that blue tag hanging from your pen?"
"That—" said Henrietta—"that means that my chicks won the first prize."
"She helped win it herself," cried old dog Spot, who was yelping about the wagon. "Our little speckled hen was the best hen at the fair!"
"Nonsense!" Henrietta exclaimed. But, all the same, she couldn't help being pleased.
THE END
SLUMBER-TOWN TALES(Trademark Registered.)By ARTHUR SCOTT BAILEYAUTHOR OF THESLEEPY-TIME TALES and TUCK-ME-IN TALESColored Wrapper and Text Illustrations Drawn by HARRY L. SMITH
These are fascinating stories of farmyard folk for boys and girls from about four to eight years of age.
THE TALE OF MISS KITTY CAT
When Mrs. Rat saw Miss Kitty Cat washing her face, she knew it meant rain. And she wouldn't let her husband leave home without his umbrella.
THE TALE OF HENRIETTA HEN
Henrietta Hen was an empty-headed creature with strange notions. She never laid an egg without making a great fuss about it.
THE TALE OF THE MULEY COW
The Muley Cow belonged to Johnnie Green. He often milked her; and she seldom put her foot in the milk pail.
THE TALE OF TURKEY PROUDFOOT
A vain fellow was Turkey Proudfoot. He loved to strut about the farmyard and spread his tail, which he claimed was the most elegant one in the neighborhood.
THE TALE OF PONY TWINKLEHEELS
Pony Twinkleheels trotted so fast you could scarcely tell one foot from another. Everybody had to step lively to get out of his way.
THE TALE OF OLD DOG SPOT
Old dog Spot had a keen nose. He was always ready to chase the wild folk. And he always looked foolish when they got away from him.
THE TALE OF GRUNTY PIG
Grunty pig was a great trial to his mother. He found it hard not to put his feet right in the feeding trough at meal time.
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York.
SLUMBER-TOWN TALES(Trademark Registered.)By ARTHUR SCOTT BAILEYAUTHOR OF THESLEEPY-TIME TALES and TUCK-ME-IN TALESColored Wrapper and Text Illustrations Drawn by HARRY L. SMITH
This series of animal stories for children from three to eight years, tells of the adventures of the four-footed creatures of our American woods and fields in an amusing way, which delights small two-footed human beings.
THE TALE OF CUFFY BEARTHE TALE OF FRISKY SQUIRRELTHE TALE OF TOMMY FOXTHE TALE OF FATTY COONTHE TALE OF BILLY WOODCHUCKTHE TALE OF JIMMY RABBITTHE TALE OF PETER MINKTHE TALE OF SANDY CHIPMUNKTHE TALE OF BROWNIE BEAVERTHE TALE OF PADDY MUSKRATTHE TALE OF FERDINAND FROGTHE TALE OF DICKIE DEER MOUSETHE TALE OF TIMOTHY TURTLETHE TALE OF BENNY BADGERTHE TALE OF MAJOR MONKEYTHE TALE OF GRUMPY WEASELTHE TALE OF GRANDFATHER MOLETHE TALE OF MASTER MEADOW MOUSE
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
Transcriber's Notes1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.2. Frontispiece illustration relocated to after title page.3. Typographic error corrected in original:p. 53 "Whtiey" to "Whitey" ("said old Whitey.")
1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.
2. Frontispiece illustration relocated to after title page.
3. Typographic error corrected in original:p. 53 "Whtiey" to "Whitey" ("said old Whitey.")