"I'm a trifle hungry, myself," declared the yellow hen.

"Why don't you eat the egg?" asked the child. "You don't need to have
your food cooked, as I do."

"Do you take me for a cannibal?" cried the hen, indignantly. "I do
not know what I have said or done that leads you to insult me!"

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure Mrs.--Mrs.--by the way, may I inquire
your name, ma'am?" asked the little girl.

"My name is Bill," said the yellow hen, somewhat gruffly.

"Bill! Why, that's a boy's name."

"What difference does that make?"

"You're a lady hen, aren't you?"

"Of course. But when I was first hatched out no one could tell
whether I was going to be a hen or a rooster; so the little boy at the
farm where I was born called me Bill, and made a pet of me because I
was the only yellow chicken in the whole brood. When I grew up, and
he found that I didn't crow and fight, as all the roosters do, he did
not think to change my name, and every creature in the barn-yard, as
well as the people in the house, knew me as 'Bill.' So Bill I've
always been called, and Bill is my name."

"But it's all wrong, you know," declared Dorothy, earnestly; "and, if