XXII

ALMOST 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 n.o.body 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 Pleasant Valley," she remarked, "nor of Farmer Green. He must be small potatoes."

Well, Henrietta was astonished. She began to feel as if she were n.o.body 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!"

XXIII

GETTING 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 course _that's_ worth waiting here a week."

"I don't see how _you_ can 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--than _you_ have!"

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, it must 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--comments fell 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,"