noon
Chicken Little 's basket filled quickly for Johnny 's sole interest in the flowers was apparently the pleasure of finding them , and he gave most of his spoils to her . Most , but not quite all . He had a little pasteboard box in his pocket into which he occasionally tucked a particularly choice spring beauty , carefully moistening its stem in the creek first . Chicken Little got so many that she generously divided with Gertie when noon came , and Miss Brown called her flock together . She showed the children how to preserve the flowers by wrapping their stems in damp moss and packing them carefully in the boxes and baskets . The ground was voted too damp for the picnic lunch so `` Teacher '' aided by the bigger boys searched till she found a great fallen tree , whose trunk and spreading branches accommodated her thirty chickens nicely . The girls lined up along the trunk as near Miss Brown as possible , but the boys perched aloft , sitting astride some crotch or forked branch with their dinner pails hung conveniently on a twig nearby .