"I laid that egg myself!" she shrieked.

"You think you did; but you didn't," Polly Plymouth Rock snapped.
"Johnnie Green took an egg of yours one day and left that other one in
its place, to deceive you. And everybody on the farm--except you--knows
that he succeeded."

Henrietta Hen didn't wait to hear anything more. She rushed squalling
into the barn and went straight to her nest. One good, hard peck at the
big white egg told her beyond all doubt that she had been betrayed. The
beautiful, big, white egg wasn't an egg after all!

Now that Henrietta Hen knew it she wondered how it could ever have
deceived her. She saw that it was shiny and altogether unlike any egg she
had ever seen anywhere.

"Johnnie Green has played a mean trick on me," Henrietta Hen cackled.
"And now I'll play one on him! He can have his old china egg. I'll leave
it here for him. But he'll find none of _my_ beautiful little brown eggs
beside it. I'll have my nest where he'll never discover it--not if he
hunts for it all summer long!"

So saying, she left the haymow. And going into the carriage shed, her
roving eyes chanced to light on an old straw hat of Johnnie Green's that
lay upside down upon a high shelf.

Henrietta Hen managed to flutter up beside it. And then with many a
chuckle she laid a brown egg in the hat.