Prevod

"It's a dreadful story!" said a hen, over in the part of town where the story had not taken place. "It's a dreadful story from the henhouse! I daren't sleep alone tonight! It's a good thing there are so many of us together on the roost!" And then she told it, so that the other hens' feathers stood on end and the cock's comb drooped. It's perfectly true!

But we shall begin at the beginning, which was in a henhouse at the other end of town. The sun went down and the hens flew up to roost. One of them had white feathers and short legs; she laid her eggs as regularly as she ought and was, as hens go, respectable in every way. As she settled on the roost, she preened herself with her beak, and a little feather fell off.

"There it goes!" she said. "The more I pluck myself, the prettier I'll be!" Now, this was said in fun, for she was the merriest of all the hens, though otherwise, as we have said, thoroughly respectable. And then she went to sleep.

It was dark all around; the hens sat side by side, and the one sitting nearest her was not asleep. She heard and did not hear, as one must in this world if one is to live in peace and quiet. Still, she felt obliged to tell her other neighbour: "Did you hear what was said just now? I name no names, but there's a hen who means to pluck herself to look pretty! If I were a cock, I should despise her!"

And just above the hens sat an owl with her husband and their children. That family had sharp ears: they heard every word the neighbouring hen said, and they rolled their eyes, while Mother Owl fanned herself with her wings. "Now, don't listen! But I suppose you heard what was said? I heard it with my own ears, and the things one's ears must hear before they fall off! There's a hen who has so utterly forgotten what is proper for a hen that she's sitting there plucking out all her feathers and letting the cock watch!"

"Prenez garde aux enfants!" said Father Owl. "This is no talk for children!" "Still, I must tell the owl across the way! She's such a respectable owl to know!" And off Mother flew.

"Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!" the two of them hooted, straight down into the dovecote across the way. "Have you heard? Have you heard? Hoo-hoo! There's a hen who has plucked out all her feathers for the cock's sake! She'll freeze to death, if she hasn't already! Hoo-hoo!"

"Where? Where?" cooed the pigeons. "In the yard across the way! I've practically seen it myself! It's almost too improper a story to tell! But it's perfectly true!"

"We do, we do believe every word!" said the pigeons, and cooed down to their poultry yard: "There's a hen—indeed, some say there are two—who have plucked out all their feathers so as not to look like the others, and so attract the cock's attention. It's a dangerous game: you can catch a chill and die of a fever, and both of them are dead!"

"Wake up! Wake up!" crowed the cock, flying up onto the fence. Sleep was still in his eyes, but he crowed all the same: "Three hens have died of unrequited love for a cock! They had plucked out all their feathers! It's a horrible story. I won't keep it to myself—pass it on!"

"Pass it on!" squeaked the bats, and the hens clucked and the cocks crowed: "Pass it on! Pass it on!" And so the story flew from henhouse to henhouse, until at last it came back to the very place where it had begun.

"There are five hens," the story went, "who all plucked out their feathers to show which of them had grown thinnest from pining for the cock, and then they pecked one another bloody and fell down dead, to the shame and disgrace of their families and at great loss to their owner!"

And the hen who had lost the little loose feather naturally did not recognise her own story, and, being a respectable hen, she said: "I despise those hens! But there are more of their kind! Such things must not be hushed up, and I shall do my part to get that story into the newspaper, so it can go all over the country. Those hens deserve it, and their families too!"

And it got into the newspaper, and it was printed, and it's perfectly true: one little feather can indeed turn into five hens!