_] Come, let us make of labour a delight!
Come, all of you!--High time, Ganders my worthies, you escorted your
geese to the pond.
A GANDER
[_Lazily._] Is it quite necessary, do you think?
CHANTECLER
[_Going briskly towards him, with a look that forbids discussion._]
Quite! And let there be no idle quacking and paltering! [_The_ GANDERS
_go off in haste._] You, Chicken, your task, as you know, is to pick off
slugs, your full number before evening being thirty-two.--You,
Cockerel, go practise your crow. Four hundred times cry
Cock-a-doodle-doo in hearing of the echo!
THE COCKEREL
[_Slightly mortified._] The echo--?
CHANTECLER
That is what I was doing to limber up my glottis before I was rid of the
egg-shell sticking to my tail!
A HEN
[_Airily._] None of this is particularly interesting!
CHANTECLER
Everything is interesting! Pray go and sit on the eggs you have been
entrusted with! [_To another_ HEN.] You, walk among the roses and
verbenas, and gobble every creature threatening them. Ha, ha! If the
caterpillar thinks we will make him a gift of our flowers he can stroke
his belly--with his back! [_To another._] You, hie to the rescue of
cabbages in old neglected corners, where the grasshopper lays siege to
them with his vigorous battering-ram! [_To the remaining_ HENS.]
You--[_Catching sight of the_ OLD HEN, _whose shaking, senile head has
lifted the basket-lid.
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