Feeling as important as she did, Henrietta Hen liked to have her own way. She said that she couldn't be expected to do just as others wished.  
"I'll take orders from nobody," she often declared. "And if I lay eggs for Farmer Green I shall lay them when and where I please."
 
Henrietta took special delight in laying her eggs in out-of-the-way places. She was never content to lay two in the same nest.
 
"If they left them for me perhaps I'd feel differently," she explained to her neighbors. "But Johnnie Green gathers every egg that he can find. And if he takes my eggs I'll make him hunt for them, anyhow."
 
The older, more staid hens shook their heads when Henrietta talked like that. They told her she was ungrateful.
 
"Farmer Green gives you a snug¹ home and plenty of food," they reminded her. "And the least you can do is to repay² him. You ought not to make trouble by hiding your eggs."
 
But Henrietta Hen couldn't—or wouldn't—agree with them.
 
"It's all very well for you to talk," she retorted³. "If my eggs were undersized I shouldn't mind losing them as fast as I laid them. But I lay the biggest and finest eggs to be had. So it's only natural that I should like to have at least one around to look at—and to show to callers."
 
Now, there were plenty of other hens in the flock⁴ that laid eggs exactly as big—or even bigger—than Henrietta Hen's. Some of them told her as much. Yet it did them no good to talk to her. She wouldn't believe that there were any eggs in the world to compare with hers. So her neighbors............