“As matters stood now, Young Grumpy felt himself quite master of the situation.  His heartless mother was forgotten.  Farmyard, clover-field, and cool green garden were all his.  Had he not routed all presumptuous enemies but the Boy?  And the latter seemed very harmless.  But a few days the garden occupied all his attention—­when he was not busy enlarging and deepening his hole under the fence and digging a second entrance to it.  He noticed that the Boy had a foolish habit of standing and watching him; but to this he had no serious objection, the more so as he found that the Boy’s presence was often accompanied by a saucer of milk.

“It was not till after several days of garden life that, lured by the memory of the carrot, he again visited the barnyard.  At first it seemed to be quite deserted.  And there was no sign of a carrot anywhere.  Then he caught sight of the yellow cat, and scurried toward her, thinking perhaps it was her fault there were no carrots.  She fluffed her tail, gave a yowl of indignation, and raced into the barn.  Neither the white dog, nor the Boy, nor the one-eyed gander was anywhere in sight.

“Young Grumpy decided that it was a poor place, the barnyard.  He was on the point of turning back to the green abundance of the garden, when a curious clucking sound attracted his attention.  At the other side of the yard he saw a red hen in a coop.  A lot of very young chickens, little yellow balls of down, were running about outside the coop.  Young Grumpy strolled over.  The chickens did not concern him in the least.  He didn’t know what they were, and, as no flesh was in his eyes good to eat, he didn’t care.  But he hoped they might have such a thing as a carrot about them.”

“Oh-h-h!  What would they have a carrot for?” protested the Babe.

Uncle Andy scorned to notice this remark.  “When Young Grumpy approached the coop,” he continued, “the red hen squawked frantically, and the chickens all ran in under her wings.  Young Grumpy eyed her with curiosity for a moment, as she screamed at him with open beak and ruffled up all her feathers.  But in the coop was a big slice of turnip, at which she had been pecking.  He knew at once this would be good, perhaps as good as a carrot, and he flattened himself against the bars trying to get in at it.

“The next moment he got a great surprise.  The red hen hurled herself at him with such violence that, although the bars protected him, he was almost knocked over.  He received a smart jab from her beak, and her bristling feathers came through the bars in a fashion that rather took away his breath.  He was furious.  Again and again he strove to force his way in, now on one side, now on the other.  But always that fiery bunch of beak and claw and feathers seemed to burst in his face.  Had it not been for the bars, indeed, the red hen would have given him an awful mauling.  But this, of course, he was too self-confident to suspect.  With characteristic obstinacy, he kept up the struggle for fully five minutes, while the terrified chickens filled the air with their pipings and the hen screamed herself hoarse.  Then, feeling a little sore, to be sure, but very certain that he had impressed the hen, he strolled off to look for some delicacy less inaccessible than that piece of turnip.