It was dawn, and the little chicken Charlie woke up from his dreams of adventure. He looked at the door of his coop and thought how nice it would be to break it open and run away strong and free in the warm golden sunlight. Charlie had never been outside his coop and felt sure he should like it. He looked around at his friends, for chickens are very sociable, and always go in crowds from one place to another.
“If we only had a plan by which to escape,” said Charlie, looking at his best friend, Daisy. “I wish we could rise above the door and fly where we liked. Come on, girls, we will try it, anyhow!”
So they all rushed to one side of the coop, but only rose as far as the boughs over their heads, and soon fluttered down again like leaves blown off a tree. Then they walked together round to the back of the coop, but a sudden movement of the wind threw over their heads a strong wooden roof a yard thick, which had once fallen forward. This seemed an effectual barrier, and they abandoned their expedition in despair.
“Chickens are born chickens, and can never be anything else,” said Daisy, beginning to cry. “I shall die here with never an adventure.”
“Adventure!” crowed the cock who ruled over the coop. “What do you want adventures for? There are plenty of adventures here, by the last account, more than twenty-two lists over, all telling whence the fowls of which we are descended came, and how many perished of hunger, and how many of everything you like to think of. This coop has its advantages. You can be sure there are no wild beasts lurking about, ready to pounce down upon you in the old, old way. Depend upon it, you are all living here in perfect security.”
“But security is not everything,” said Charlie, who was undaunted by the rebuke of the rooster. “Daisy, and all my friends, let us try our wings once more. I feel I could manage it this time. I only want a little encouragement, and, even if I fail again, do not give way to despair.”
So they all steeled themselves once more to the adventure, and at the third attempt Rose and her friends cleared the door by some inches, and flew on to the yard just in front as and looked round on their adventures with glee.
“Oh, dear!” cried Charlie, breathing fragrance on the cool morning air and feeling himself entirely alone. “How shall we ever come together again?”
Then he uttered a loud cry, and all his friends soon came hither, a great many neighbouring cocks rushing at the same minute to have a look at the lively damsels. Daisy walked unnecessarily by the side of the cock in the middle, who was nearly as tall as herself, and possibly if it had not been for Charlie she would have seized on him as her husband.
“But,” said Charlie to himself, “he is perhaps a very fine cock, but still he is very tame, and I hope my girlfriend will have nothing to do with him. It is almost a kind of moral treason not to embrace every opportunity which nature offers us of changing our lot.”
This speech, if it was not very clear itself, made a great impression upon Daisy, who at once made up to him.
“We must take off our bows,” said Daisy; “I know they are all overcome with our arrival, and the least we can do in such circumstances is to help them to admire us all the more.”
This idea had an excellent effect. Suddenly all the hens took pride in their prettily feathered bodies, and the hens were taken with the piano supporting the fond imaginations of certain litterateurs who, in spite of living in a lark’s songs, have yet not cast aside the luxuries which man has compelled to forsake.
But under the indifferent cover belonging to the neighbouring cock teeming dangers were hatching, such as have not been known in the world since animals began to treat one another as friends and neighbours. The wretched Esther, who had formed such an extremist party against Charlie, was abandoning herself in a barge full of their enemies; and delay would have been ruin, for they saw their common dwelling and lives perishing in a fire. But Charlie was not slow in giving a circular summon to all the cocks of the neighbouring yards within a circle of some leagues round. The sun, whose first rays filled our little coop with opalescent light, was then nearly at its zenith, when a grand attack found oneself suddenly already entered some yards, giving every one the freedom of the utmost daring.
When Charlie reached the page where at daybreak I was waiting, I found I had saved a fatal step. As soon as I put my foot in the hall, Esther disappeared, howling with rage to learn that her furious enemies had escaped from the flames.