"It's kind of you to say so," Mrs. Goose replied with a smirk. "If I
keep on at this rate you'll think I like to talk as well as Mamma
Speckle does; but I've heard of you so often from our people around
here, that it seemed as if I must have a whole lot of stories to tell,
else you'd say I wasn't much of anybody after all. But about Mr. Dorking
Rooster: it seems that one night he couldn't sleep, on account of having
eaten too much, and for the first time in his life he saw the moon and
the stars.

"The next day, when he was going across the front yard, he saw one of
those large rubber balls, painted in bright colors, such as Mr. Man's
children use to play with in the house, and after looking it over
carefully he decided that he knew what it was.

[Illustration: Mr. Dorking Finds the Moon.]

"'This must be the moon I saw last night,' he said to himself; 'but it
don't seem to shine as it did then. Perhaps it doesn't give out any
light till after sunset, so I'll wait till then to see it.'

"So Mr. Dorking sat down and waited. The sun set, and black clouds
covered the sky, but, yet the ball did not shine. All the other chickens
had gone to roost hours before; but Mr. Dorking kept on watching. It
began to rain; the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled. The rooster
was wet to the skin, and terribly frightened.

"'I'll save the moon,' he cried, and picking up the ball in his beak,
which wasn't an easy task, he ran as fast as he could to the hen-house;
but when he got there the storm had cleared away. Looking up, Mr.