Gertrude McCluck strutted leisurely around the farmyard. She was thinking about the one thing that she almost always thought about. That one thing was herself. She was a very distinct chicken on the farm, or so she thought.

"Who else is completely white with tons of two-inch feathers on top of her head? Nobody, absolutely nobody. All the hens look up to me, except that stuck-up Miss Matilda. She is the only hen on the whole farm who doesn't like me."

All the hens did like Gertrude McCluck, but not in the way Gertrude thought. They thought her airs very funny. All the hens enjoyed her immensely, but only because it was so entertaining to hear her talk. One day, when they were watching a cumulus cloud in the sky, Gertrude proudly proclaimed, "That is a Columbus Cloud," which amused the hens greatly. Rolling her eyes, Miss Matilda, a very proper chicken, walked away because it was "very undignified to act the part of a fool," as she put it. Therefore, she never talked to Gertrude.

One hot August day, Gertrude McCluck sat with all the hens panting and drinking water. "This is so miserable," Gertrude commented, "that I do believe we are having a hot front. A hot front is..." It was in the middle of this ridiculous speech that Gertrude McCluck experienced the most humiliating event of her life.

One of the farmer's children caught her up and carried her out into the yard where a bowl of cold water waited. Grabbing McCluck by the wings, the child thrust her into the water and then pulled her out again. Poor Gertrude. Her feathers that used to stand so grandly on her head were now limp and hung about her soaking face in the most laughable manner. The other hens cackled and screamed at this funny scene. Our very wet chicken ran and hid behind the food bowl. At that moment, Miss Matilda came by. It was then that Matilda did something she had never done before. She talked to Gertrude.

Matilda wasn't liked by any of the hens because they all thought her conceited. She wanted to be friends with Gertrude, but, at the same time, she didn't. She had made up her mind to be nice to Gertrude, even if she was a little silly. You see, she had started to notice that being a loner wasn't at all nice.

"Gertrude," she said, "it's okay. Your feathers are so much whiter. If you preen your head feathers up, you'll look much better!" Then, Matilda ran her beak through Gertrude's feathers, and she did look considerably better. "Now you just come right back outside and we can watch the other hens so you can dry off."

From that moment on, Gertrude and Matilda were great friends. Despite what Gertrude thought at the moment, it wasn't such a very bad thing that she got dunked in a bowl of water one hot August day.