with thanks and sent her off with her ugly-mouthed off-spring. Well, as
I was saying, our coop was carried down the stream, Billy and I
balancing ourselves on the upper roost and speaking words of comfort to
cheer up each other's fast fainting gizzards. We hens have a proverb
which says, 'A life without hope is an egg without a yolk, a gizzard
without gravel,' and that night proved the words to be true. Suddenly
down went Billy into the roaring flood. I can see his yellow spurs as he
went under, and his clutching claws, those beautiful, shining claws that
only walked the path of virtue, as far as I knew. Alas how I fluttered,
I tried to crow for help but it was useless, I could no more do it than
the hens of your genus can whistle. Billy went out forever.

"How I remember his kindness now; how he would find the best worms and
grasshoppers and always call me to see them before he ate them, not as
that old beast Cochin China does, who not even lets his wife look at the
delicious morsels he swallows.

"Billy is gone, so I will not regret him for he is probably chief
crower in St. Peter's hennery now. How Peter must blush when he hears
Billy crow, if he has any shame for his past sins. They say St. Peter
has to keep all the dead cocks as a sort of punishment and reminder.

"That night I pulled all the yellow feathers out of my tail, (I have
Cochin blood in my veins,) and I have gone in black Spanish costume ever
since out of respect for Billy.

"By morning I was cast with the coop upon a deserted island; there was
nothing but a coarse grass that was eatable, but I was almost dead with
hunger, and was about giving up in despair when a happy thought struck
me, and, I laid an egg, which with a little grass made me a good meal.