"What do you think of that crowing?" said the yard cock to the hens and chickens.
"It was a little rough--it wanted elegance."
And the hens and chickens came up on the dung-hill, and the cock strutted about
like a lord.
"Garden plant!" he said to the cucumber, and in that one word his deep learning showed itself,
and it forgot that he was pecking at her and eating it up. "A happy death!"
The hens and the chickens came, for where one runs the others run too; they clucked, and chirped,
and looked at the cock, and were proud that he was of their kind.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" he crowed, "the chickens will grow up into great hens at once, if I cry it
out in the poultry-yard of the world!"
And hens and chicks clucked and chirped, and the cock announced a great piece of news.
"A cock can lay an egg! And do you know what's in that egg? A basilisk. No one can stand the sight
of such a thing; people know that, and now you know it too--you know what is in me, and what a
champion of all cocks I am!"
With that the yard cock flapped his wings, made his comb swell up, and crowed again; and they all
shuddered, the hens and the little chicks--but they were very proud that one of their number was
such a champion of all cocks. They clucked and chirped till the weather-cock heard; he heard it,
but he did not stir.
"Everything is very stupid," the weather-cock said to himself. "The yard-cock lays no eggs, and I
am too lazy to do so; if I liked, I could lay a wind-egg. But the world is not worth even a wind
-egg. Everything is so stupid! I don't want to sit here any longer."
With that the weather-cock borke off; but he did not kill the yard-cock, although the hens said
that had been his intention. And what is the moral? "Better to crow than to be puffed up and break
off!"