But we’ll start at the beginning, and that was in a henhouse in another part of town. The sun went down, and the hens flew up. One of them—she had white feathers and short legs—laid her prescribed eggs and was, as a hen, respectable in every way. As she settled on the perch, she preened herself with her beak, and a little feather fell out.

“There went that one,” she said. “The more I preen myself, the more beautiful I will surely become.” And she said it in fun, because she was the cheerful soul among the hens and otherwise, as mentioned, very respectable. Then she fell asleep.

It was dark all around. One hen sat next to the other, and the one sitting next to her wasn’t sleeping. She heard, and she didn’t hear—as you must in this world to live in peace and quiet—so to her other neighbor she just had to say: “Did you hear what was said here? I’ll mention no names, but there’s a hen here who will pluck out her feathers for vanity’s sake. If I were a rooster, I would despise her!”

Right above the hens the owl was sitting with her owl husband and little owly children. That family has sharp ears, and they heard every word that the neighbor hen uttered. They rolled their eyes, and mother owl fanned herself with her wings. “Just don’t listen! But you did hear what was said, of course. I heard it with my own ears, and you have to hear a lot before your ears fall off. One of the hens has forgotten herself to the extent that she is plucking out all her feathers right in front of the rooster!”

“Little pitchers have big ears,” said father owl. “This isn’t fit for the children.”

“I’ll just tell the neighbor owl. She’s such a respectable owl to whoop it up with.” And away flew mother.

“Whoooo, whoooo” they both hooted, over to the neighbor’s pigeon coop. “Have you heard? Have you heard? Whoooo? There’s a hen who has plucked out all her feathers for the sake of a rooster. She’s freezing to death, if she isn’t dead already!”

“Where? where?” cooed the pigeons.

“In the yard across the street. I’ve as good as seen it myself. It’s really almost unfit to tell, but it’s perfectly true!”

“Truuuu, truuuu, every word,” cooed the pigeons, and cooed down to its hen yard. “There’s a hen—some say two—that plucked out all their feathers so they wouldn’t look like the others and in order to attract the rooster. It’s a daring game because you can catch cold and die of fever, and both of them are dead!”

“Wake up! wake up!” the rooster crowed and flew up on the board fence. He still had sleep in his eyes, but he crowed anyway. “Three hens have died from a broken heart because of a rooster! They plucked out all their feathers! It’s a terrible story, and I don’t want to keep it to myself—pass it on!”

“Pass it on!” peeped the bats, and the hens clucked, and the roosters crowed: “Pass it on! Pass it on!” and the story flew from henhouse to henhouse and finally back to the place where it had started.

“It’s said that there were five hens who plucked all their feathers out to show who had gotten the thinnest for the love of a rooster, and they pecked at each other until they were bloody and fell dead, to the sorrow and shame of their families and a big loss for their owner!”

And the hen, who had lost the little feather, naturally didn’t recognize her own story, and since she was a respectable hen, she said, “I despise those hens! But there are more of that type. Things like this shouldn’t be hushed up, and I’ll do my best to see that it gets into the papers so that everyone in the country will hear about it. Those hens deserve it and so do their families!”

And the story got into the papers and was printed, and it’s perfectly true: one little feather really can become five hens!