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Title: Janet: A Stock-Farm Scout

Author: Lillian Elizabeth Roy

Illustrator: Elizabeth Colborne

Release date: December 30, 2021 [eBook #67053]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: A. L. Burt Company, 1925

Credits: Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANET: A STOCK-FARM SCOUT ***

JANET: A STOCK-FARM SCOUT

Janet lifted the dish while Natalie and the other girls led Susy by the tether-rope to a shady spot.

JANET: A Stock-Farm Scout

By LILLIAN ELIZABETH ROY

Author of

“Natalie: A Garden Scout,” “Norma: A Flower Scout,”

“The Blue Birds Series,” “The Five Little Starrs Series.”

Endorsed by and Published with the Approval of

NATIONAL GIRL SCOUTS

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers—New York

Printed in U. S. A.

The Girl Scouts

Country Life Series

A SERIES OF STORIES FOR GIRLS

By LILLIAN ELIZABETH ROY

NATALIE: A GARDEN SCOUT

JANET: A STOCK-FARM SCOUT

NORMA: A FLOWER SCOUT

Copyright, 1925

By A. L. BURT COMPANY

JANET: A STOCK-FARM SCOUT

Made in “U. S. A.”

CONTENTS

I.

JANET’S ARRIVAL AT GREEN HILL

II.

JANET TRIES CARPENTRY

III.

TRIALS OF A STOCK-FARMER

IV.

TENDERFOOT SCOUTS OF SOLOMON’S SEAL TROOP

V.

THE POULTRY GO ON STRIKE

VI.

JANET RECEIVES ENCOURAGEMENT

VII.

THE FORTUNE IN KEEPING A COW

VIII.

AN ANIMAL HUNT

IX.

TELLS OF BEES AND BUGS

X.

JANET ADDS TO HER STOCK FAMILY

XI.

BREAKING THE TENTH COMMANDMENT

XII.

SUSY’S COMPLAINT

XIII.

FRANCES REBELS

XIV.

SORROWS OF A STOCK SCOUT

JANET: A STOCK-FARM SCOUT

CHAPTER I

JANET’S ARRIVAL AT GREEN HILL

The local train from Grand Central station, bound for Four Corners, a flag station on the Harlem Division of the New York Central, carried a very busy young passenger one Saturday morning in June. The passenger was Janet Wardell and her work consisted of studying the first few written pages of a brand new diary. Although her eyes would often gaze with interest at the lovely country scenery to be seen from the car windows, Janet found an irresistible attraction in the writing before her.

Finally, however, Janet sighed and opened her suitcase to slip the diary into it, but read once more what she had inscribed.

“Last Night. Helene gave me this lovely diary last night and told me to be sure and jot down everything that might happen at Green Hill Farm this summer. It’s too bad Helene could not join us in our new Scout work, but Mother said we five girls would be quite enough trouble for poor Jimmy to chaperone; besides, Mother thinks Helene is too young to join a Scout Troop, but she will see about starting her with the Scout Brownies at once.

“Helene said, last night, that next to being one of our party on the farm, the story of all we do this summer, faithfully recorded by me in this book, will be best. So I solemnly agreed to keep tabs on the least thing we did—this is why I am writing now.

“Not only will Helene enjoy reading the diary after I go home, this fall, but we girls will have many a merry evening as we sit together reviewing our weeks on the farm. I just know there will be lots of excitement for us, and bushels of fun, every day.

“I suppose I really ought to begin the regular entries in the diary by dating them as I go along—but the dates ready-made are too limited to say all I will have to tell, so I’d better make my own. So now I’ll begin with to-day.

“Saturday. I had a dreadful time this morning trying to get away from the house in time to catch this train, because Frances Lowden, Belle Barlow and Norma Evaston talked and talked over the telephone until I had to tell them right out, that I would hang up if they didn’t say good bye. Belle laughed and said something I did not hear because I was handing the receiver to Mother to end the good byes for me.

“When we got to Grand Central station, what do you think? There were those girls waiting for me, laughing and rushing for me, and keeping me from getting my ticket. Thank goodness, the guard at the gate refused to pass them through to see me off, so they had to stand at one side and watch me go down the platform. I wasn’t any too soon for the train, either, for I had no sooner found a seat than the guard gave the signal and we started.

“I am looking at the country we are passing through and I think it is very pretty, indeed, but not as lovely as the country around Green Hill Farm.”

Janet dropped the diary inside the suitcase and was about to close the case when she remembered an item she wished to inscribe. The diary was removed again and the fountain-pen cap was unscrewed.

“I wish to say that I haven’t the slightest idea of doing a thing all summer but just sleep, and read, and lounge about in the hammock Mother is sending out to the farm. Natalie wrote me all about her vegetable venture, but she needn’t think I’m going to help. Not much! I’m too tired after the exams at school, and I’m going in for the rest cure!”

This time, Janet closed the suitcase upon the tempting diary and gave her entire attention to the views of the country. She had not much time to spend in this way before the guard on the train called out “Four Corners!”

Janet hurriedly gathered her baggage and left the car to find Natalie and Mrs. James eagerly awaiting her. While the two girls are engrossed with telling each other all that had happened since last they had seen each other, let us introduce Natalie to any reader who has not read about her in the first book of the Girl Scout Country Life Series.

Natalie Averill, a delicate city girl of about thirteen, had been orphaned a short time before the story opened. Mrs. James, lovingly nicknamed “Jimmy” by Natalie and her chums, acted as a friend and chaperone to the forlorn girl; and Rachel, who had been the cook in Mrs. Averill’s service for many years, remained to see Natalie through her experience of trouble. As Rachel declared to Mr. Marvin, the family lawyer: “Does you-all t’ink dis chile goin’ to go back on her Honey-babe now dat she ain’t got no money like-as-we-all figgered Mr. Averill done goin’ to leab her? No, sah, not Rachel!”

Thus it happened that not only Natalie and Mrs. James, but Rachel, as well, went to Green Hill Farm to live and get ready for the coming of the four girl-boarders who were expected immediately after the closing of High School in the city. So that Saturday, when Amity Ketchum drove his old surrey up to the side porch of the farm house, Rachel bustled from the dining room door and held out her fat hands to Janet in hearty welcome. “Jus’ in time, Honey, fer some of my famous tarts fer lunch! Come right on in!”

Saturday noon. Just finished luncheon with Nat and Jimmy. I never saw such a wonderful change in anyone as has taken place in Natalie since she came to Green Hill. Maybe it is due to her work in a garden, or it may be the country life and fine air, or it may be a number of good things combined, but whatever may be the cause, the effect is most astonishing. Natalie not only looks as happy and healthy as any one could wish, but also, she is changed from the morbid, pessimistic girl I knew in New York City to a joyous, optimistic worker. She says it is her garden that gave her an interest in living again.

Saturday, after luncheon. Natalie took me to see her vegetable garden. I didn’t see much, but I dared not say so. There were a lot of wilty looking little green slips which Nat said were lettuce, radishes and other truck that Farmer Ames discarded and she had gathered in. Sort of an asylum for undesired plants, thought I. But Jimmy assured me that these same tired-looking sprigs of green would soon be delicious things to eat. I have to believe it because Mrs. James said it. I am writing this, now, since Nat remained in the garden to root out several imaginary weeds, and I came back to the house with Jimmy.

Saturday, two P. M. Natalie came in a short time ago and immediately began dilating on a plan she had thought out for me, while she weeded the garden. She declared that I ought to start a stock farm and raise a few pigs and chickens. She explained that there would be plenty of table leavings as soon as the other girls arrive and the Scouts of Solomon Seal Camp might save their garbage for me, too. When I said that I never cared for garbage, Jimmy laughed and explained that Nat meant it for the pigs.

Then I replied that I never thought pigs lived on garbage; Natalie seemed amazed at my ignorance. But it soon developed that she had just learned it from Farmer Ames, who raises hogs for sale, every year. Jimmy (that’s Mrs. James, you know) now said that Natalie’s plan might be a good one, as there was not enough garden work to do to keep two of us busy, and Rachel needed lots of eggs. She suggested that I sell the eggs my chickens laid; thus making them pay for themselves. Sounds rather ungenerous of one, I think—coop the hens up, feed them with scraps, and then coax them to lay eggs that one might sell to pay for the cost of them. Jimmy also added that the Scouts might buy eggs from me.

Then Natalie proposed a walk to the barnyard to see if the chicken yards were fit to use. The fence is down and the coops need repairing, but that looks easy to do. We then looked for a likely place for a pig pen in case I decided to try the plan. Jimmy showed us the spot she would choose if she was going to keep pigs. The more I think of the scheme, the more it appeals to me.

On our way back to the house, Natalie became enthusiastic on the subject and said that later on I might add a cow to my other pets and sell the milk to the Scouts at camp, and to Rachel for the house use.

That made me laugh! I jeered: “Can you see me trying to milk an obstreperous cow and being kicked over the fence into that ten-acre lot?”

While Nat and I laughed at this, Jimmy mentioned something about butter or butt her, but her words were rather ambiguous.

Saturday evening. At supper, this evening, Jimmy, Nat and I talked seriously of the idea of my starting a farm yard with enough stock to give me an interest in farm life and at the same time give both the Scout Camp and our house all the fresh eggs, milk and butter needed during the summer at prevailing prices. As Jimmy said: “There’s a ready-made farm yard and barns for you with no rent to pay, and a field of free grass adjoining the barn yard, where your stock can roam and graze.” Natalie then told me about the cute little pigs Farmer Ames’s brother had for sale, and the many chickens Farmer Ames had for sale. It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Sunday. We visited Solomon’s Seal Camp today, and had a very interesting time. Miss Mason’s scouts certainly are clever in their woodcraft knowledge and work. I never knew before that you could make a fire with but two sticks. Nor did I dream that you could cook in vessels made of wildwood material alone. One of the scouts told about the various mushrooms, good for food; and of wild potatoes; of a plant that produces greens exactly like spinach, and another plant that tastes like Brussels sprouts when boiled. It was extremely interesting, and I feel that this scout work is going to be more fun than labor.

After we got back to the house, Natalie and I planned to enlist several of the girls of Four Corners in a drive to start a second Patrol of Solomon’s Seal Scouts. Miss Mason said, this afternoon, that she was eager to charter as a Troop with the organization headquarters, and that our founding another Patrol would help her out immediately. When Belle, Norma and Frances get her from the City, there will be five of us girls; with three or four more we can surely count on from Four Corners we shall have enough to start Patrol Number Two of Miss Mason’s Troop.

Miss Mason is Captain of her Scouts, but she suggested this afternoon, that Jimmy ought to be the Lieutenant of the Troop. They have a splendid Leader of their Scouts, but they proposed me as Corporal of the Troop, when it is chartered by headquarters. I felt flattered by the selection, but replied that I thought Natalie was the logical one to choose. She declared that no one was as capable of taking things into their own hands as I—that is why the honor was presented to me. I think I’d like to be a Scout Corporal.

Sunday evening. We decided to stop Farmer Ames when he drives past, in the morning, and ask him to take us as far as Four Corners with him. We are going there to ask two girls to join a new Patrol at once; after that we’re going to Mr. Ames’s brother’s farm and invite Dorothy Ames to enlist, too. Then we will look at the pigs for sale, and on the way home we will stop in at Ames’s farm and choose some chickens. You have doubtless discovered that I have decided to try out the stock-raising idea and see how I like it. If it doesn’t succeed, I can always kill the chickens and sell them to Rachel for fricasee. Then I won’t have lost out on my experiment or investment.

Monday morning, before breakfast. I was awakened from a sweet sleep by unearthly shouts from out-of-doors. It was Natalie in her garden, calling us to hurry out and see the new greens that had come up since Saturday. Of course we all hurried; Rachel who was in the kitchen preparing breakfast, ran first, Jimmy second and I was third, twisting up my hair as I ran. Rachel made a great fuss over the marvel of her “Honey-Chile” raising vegetables. And I admitted that it was a marvel that anything Natalie ever planted was given time to come up. Natalie frowned, and Rachel pooh-poohed but Jimmy laughed. She told me later that Natalie really did dig up the seeds several times, to see how far they had sprouted.

Monday, after breakfast. I am up in my room for my hat so I can steal a moment to say that we are off for Four Corners to visit the girls Natalie knows, to join our Patrol-to-be. Farmer Ames is coming down the road, so no more at present, little diary.

Monday A. M. at Four Corners. I’m scribbling a line in my diary while Nat is writing postals to the girls at home, urging them to come to Green Hill at once, as we need them in the Patrol. The new members we met at the Corners are crazy to join us, so that is settled. Natalie said she would write while at the store so the cards could go out on the next mail. Farmer Ames will be back for us in a few minutes to take us to his brother’s farm to see the pigs. On our way back from his brother’s home he is going to stop at his own place and let us choose the chickens.

Monday, one P. M. Well, I’ve gone and done the most reckless thing! I spent most of my monthly allowance for three weeny pigs, an adult hen that wants to set, and several big chickens, and a lot of baby chicks. It happened this way: The piglets were so wee and darling that I just had to have them so I bought all that Mr. Ames had for sale.

When we drove in at our Farmer Ames’s place, he said that Nat and I could select any chickens we liked for a dollar each. The rooster would be half a dollar more. We went to the yard and looked over all the chickens there, but a variegated cock that strutted around like an emperor in his palace gardens caught my eye. I drew Natalie’s attention to him, and we decided to buy him. He has a marvelous tail of long coque feathers, and a pair of red bibs hanging from his beak. I suppose they are called bibs, because that seems to be the only use they can be put to.

After deciding upon that rooster, we began looking for the largest and fattest hens we could find. This was Natalie’s suggestion. She is becoming a splendid business woman since coming to the farm to live. She whispered to me so Farmer Ames need not overhear her: “He said we could choose any chicken we wanted as they are all the same price. So let’s take those great big ones for they must weigh at least a pound more than the smaller brown ones.”

Farmer Ames tried to dissuade us from taking the gorgeous chanticler, and the big Plymouth Rock hens—that is what he called them—but we knew it was because he hated to lose the beautiful cock and those fine big hens. So we insisted upon having the ones we chose, or none.

Ames begged us to take Rhode Island Reds and a few speckled guinea-hens because he said they were better laying hens. But we could see that his worry and concern was because we chose the most picturesque of all his fowl. Natalie is shrewd, so she said, as Ames went in to catch the little chicks for us: “Doesn’t it stand to reason that those small brown hens will lay small eggs? Our lovely big hens will lay great big fat eggs!” I hadn’t given that a thought until Nat spoke of it, but it sounds plausible.

Mr. Ames took the setting hen we wanted, and put her in a feed-bag so we could take her home, but he said he could not catch the other chickens until night when they went to roost. He promised to bring them over in the morning. Then we started home. On the way, he said: “Remember! I warned you not to choose that fancy rooster and them ancient hens, but you would have it your own way. So now I wash my hands of the consequences. Don’t blame me if they don’t lay golden eggs for you!”

Natalie and I laughed, for we felt sorry for poor Ames; that cock was the only handsome bird he had, and now he is ours. The piglets, safe in a crate in the back of the wagon, squealed too cunningly for anything when we bumped over a rut in the road. As soon as we arrived at the house, Farmer Ames left the crate on the back stoop, and Nat helped me carry the bag with the hen in it to the barn where a chicken coop was waiting for her. On the way out of the yard, Mr. Ames called to Jimmy and said: “Them cherries oughta be picked today or tomorrow, sure. They’ll rot if you don’t gather them.”

Rachel hurried out to the stoop at that, and suggested that the girl scouts pick the fruit on shares. That sounded great, so Natalie and I offered to run down and ask the scouts if they wanted to help pick the cherries. Of course they did!

Monday, 6 P. M. Just finished picking cherries. Rachel is preparing supper for all of us; the scouts did such good work that Jimmy said they must have a meal included with their wages. Their pay was half of all the cherries they picked. My, there were a lot! And we ate so many, besides, that it is doubtful if we can eat a bit of supper.

A dreadful thing happened to Natalie while we were up in the cherry trees. A hornet stung her on the neck and she let go of the bough. Down she came, but a friendly limb caught her and held her until we rescued her. When Rachel heard her scream, she ran out to see what had happened. It only took her a second to rush across the grass and catch hold of a high step-ladder that stood under a neighboring tree. But Rachel did not see the girl standing on top of the ladder, so it was whirled away from under her, and she was left hanging high and dry. Rachel stood the ladder under Natalie’s bough and then began to hastily ascend it. But the ladder was not securely placed and when it began to sway, Rachel got dizzy. Down came her two hundred pounds right in a bushel of ripe ox-hearts. I could have wept at the wholesale loss of such fruit! Rachel said she might be able to reclaim the cherries by canning them.

Monday night, 8 P. M. My troubles have begun. I forgot about those pigs in the crate while the scouts were here to supper. As we all went out on the side porch to say good night to the girls of Solomon’s Seal Camp, the porkers began squealing dreadfully. The scouts said I was cruel to forget to give them their supper, so I got Rachel to help me fix up a dish of corn meal and milk for them. This done, I remembered the setting hen in the barn. I had not fed her, either.

When I told Natalie, she laughed and said my investment would be a dead loss if I kept up that kind of treatment. So we both decided to go to the barn, as it is too spooky a place for one to wander in alone. Not that the hen would jump at us, and there is no other animal there, yet, but two is company, you know.

It was Natalie’s suggestion that we take the eggs with us and place them in the nest under the hen, while she ate her meal. We took the leavings from supper, and all the bad cherries that Rachel had thrown in the garbage pail, and filled a pan with them. We took twelve eggs from the pasteboard box in the pantry, although Mr. Ames said for us to place fifteen eggs under the hen at a time. Rachel only had thirteen left in the box that came from the store, and we thought we had best leave one in case she needed it for breakfast in the morning. Nat carried the pan of food and the flashlight, while I carefully carried the twelve eggs.

Oh, such a time as we had with that old scrapper of a hen! She fought us with bill and claws, and our hands and wrists are a sight! Finally Natalie almost squeezed the life out of her in trying to hold her out of the nest, and I managed to get seven of the dozen eggs in the straw for her to set upon. The other five were smashed in the fray. Maybe we were not glad when that job was over!

As it is not worth while taking the time to hatch but seven eggs, I am going to get another dozen from the store as soon as I have the money, and then I’ll add them to the other eggs already under the hen. I don’t suppose it makes any difference whether the chicks come out a few days late, or not. As long as they come—that is the main thing. The hen can’t tell when they were put in the nest, a few days late, or all on time. And all eggs look alike to her. That makes me think of the funny song: “All coons, etc.”

Tuesday A. M. Rachel gave us ham for breakfast. She said she could “a’swore” she had a few eggs left for an omelette but when she went to the pantry she found only one egg. Natalie and I kept very sober faces although we both wanted to shriek with laughter. Jimmy knew we had been up to something and when Rachel left the room, she turned and asked Nat what we were choking over.

Natalie giggled as she replied: “Janet and I scrambled those eggs last night. That’s why Rachel couldn’t find any this morning.”

We both roared, but we never said a word about the setting hen, as we intend a surprise for Mrs. James when the first chicks come out of the shells. It certainly will be a surprise! Before we finished breakfast, Rachel reappeared and said: “Dem pigs is yelling fit to kill themselves. Ef you don’t git ’em out of dat crate dis mawnin’, dey’ll die on you. The fust thing you do, dis mawnin’ is to nail up some slats fer a pen and dump ’em in so dey kin exercise. And don’t fergit a hearty breakfast fer ’em, too.”

“Well, my little diary, I am now going to build a pig pen and a chicken coop. I may not be able to give you another message for a time, but I will have every morning and every evening for this pleasant work.”

CHAPTER II

JANET TRIES CARPENTRY

There was so much to do, once Janet started in trying to keep fowl and other barn yard stock, that the poor diary was seldom remembered. Now and then, at long intervals, she jotted down items, merely as a salve to her conscience and to placate Helene, when the home-coming should reveal the truth that the diary had been sadly neglected.

Early Tuesday morning, having thrown the diary into the bottom bureau drawer, Janet ran downstairs to ask Rachel for a hammer, saw and nails.

“What foh, Honey?” demanded the suspicious cook.

“I’ve got to build a good pig pen, Rach, and fix over that chicken coop before Ames brings over the hens and rooster.”

“Does yoh know how to drive a nail?” asked Rachel.

“That’s nothing to learn. You just hold the nail where it is to go and then bang! bring down the hammer,” explained Janet.

“Ump!” chuckled the mammy. “Da’s all! Jus’ fotch down the hammer. But moh times as not, dat same weapon hits yoh fingah nail and den yoh does a jazz dance, all right!”

“Oh, pooh! If one uses judgment and looks where the hammer is to go, there is no excuse for accidents,” Janet bragged.

“All right! Hab it yoh way. I’m sure I ain’t one to wish no mashed nails fer yoh. But be keerful—da’s all I says!” And with this last admonition, Rachel got the tools for Janet.

Natalie assisted Janet in moving the crate containing the three pigs, to the barn yard where they were left until such a time as their future residence should be completed. Meantime they certainly made the welkin ring with their deafening squeals.

“My goodness, Jan, how can such nerve-racking sounds come from such tiny creatures?” wondered Natalie aloud, as she stood gazing down at the squirming porkers.

“They can silence any steam siren from the factories in New York, or across the River,” laughed Janet.

“Well, I’m off for my garden. I don’t envy you working to such an accompaniment of harmony,” giggled Natalie, skipping away.

Janet now went to the loft of the barn to seek such lumber as would answer for the building of the pen. But she found that most of it was too heavy and cumbersome, or very frail and light. The pig pen and chicken coops had to be ready, however, so she took as many old lath and discarded shingles as she could carry, and heaped them beside the broken down pen that had given years of service to the last tenant of the farm.

Janet stood planning what was the first step to take in building a pig pen. As she was a bright girl, she decided to examine the methods used in building the nearby cow shed. So she went over and found it was necessary to use posts to form solid supports to which the crossboards could be nailed.

“That means I’ll have to hunt up some sort of stuff to do for posts,” murmured Janet, as she returned to the barn for the quest.

But she saw nothing that would answer her need, so she left the barn and sought anxiously back of the sheds in the piled up discard of old posts, boards and broken sash frames and trim. Finally she selected seven badly decayed posts which had been removed from the road line years before when the former tenant of the farm had nailed the wire fencing to the cherry trees, as Farmer Ames explained in Natalie’s Garden Book.

“Well, they’re posts, anyway!” declared Janet to herself, dragging as many as she could move over to the new location for the pig pen.

The best post was used first. Janet held it up on the line she proposed to build upon, but she discovered that the timber would not stand without a support.

“What now?” thought she, glancing around for an inspiration.

Then she comprehended what was lacking. “Oh, I see! One has to dig holes and plant the posts, first!”

Again she stood bewildered. “What do they dig with? I think I’ll ask Jimmy.” She ran to the house to secure the valuable information that would enable her to continue her work.

Mrs. James was assisting Rachel with the dinner and both women paused long enough to explain that most post-holes were made with a boring machine that came for that very purpose. But, as there was no post-hole digger at Green Hill Farm, the next best plan was to use muscles to bore the holes. A pick and spade were the necessary tools to handle.

Janet frowned but she was determined to succeed or die. So she took the pick and spade from the cellar and carried them to the barn yard. She dug and shoveled steadily for an hour, and then sat up on the crate and moaned with the ache in her back and arms.

“I wish to goodness I hadn’t listened to Nat’s sorcery! If she only had hinted at one iota of the labor necessary to start a stock farm, this scout would never have been the one to break a back working at it!” complained Janet, very carefully wiggling her spine to dispossess a few of the cramps.

While she tried to straighten out her muscles Farmer Ames drove in at the side gate and shouted to Rachel. “I got the fowl for them gals. Where shall I leave ’em?”

Janet was eager to run to the house to greet her new stock members but she could barely move. So she contented herself with watching Rachel wave her arms to direct the farmer toward the barn yard.

When the team stopped near the chicken yard, Farmer Ames pulled the feed bags from the wagon and carried them to the “run.” Janet had managed to exercise her muscles sufficiently, by this time, to be able to get over and welcome the farmer. He looked at her and then at the poor enclosure for the chickens.

“You don’t mean to keep chickens in that broken-down yard, do you?” asked he.

“Oh, no! I’m going to build a fine fence and new coops immediately. But I have to look after the pigs first, you know. I have been working like mad all morning to finish their new sty.”

“You don’t say you ain’t got them pigs outen that crate yet? By the great horned spoon, gal, do you want to kill ’em?” gasped Farmer Ames.

“Of course not!” retorted Janet, highly indignant at such a needless query. “Did I not spend my own money to buy them?”

Then Farmer Ames went over to look at the posts Janet had erected. She followed in silence, hoping for yet fearing his verdict. He grasped one with an iron hand and shook it vigorously. The timber was rotted, and the post was only standing in a hole of about three inches depth; but Janet had piled dirt up about it to the height of about ten inches and had packed it solidly about the sides to make it seem to be firmly standing. But one result could occur at the shaking—the post fell.

“Oh, dear me! Just see what you’ve done by handling it as if it were a steel girder on a skyscraper!” exclaimed Janet, her voice expressing her annoyance.

“If the rotten post wouldn’t stand a gentle tap like I gave it, how do you s’pose them pigs would keep penned in when they grows a bit. I wants to tell you, gal, that them pigs ain’t no sickly brand. Once you treats them fair they’ll make your eyes pop with the way they grow. My brother gets all the prizes for his hogs at the County Fairs hereabouts. And your pigs are of that same kind,” was Farmer Ames’s practical reply.

“What else could I do when posts are not to be found?” complained Janet.

“Buy some and use a post-hole digger!”

“Where do you buy such things? And a post-hole digger will take a week before it gets here from the city.”

“Can’t you cut down some young trees in the woods down by the crick? Them will make good posts. And you could have hired me to dig the holes with my machine. I was comin’ here, anyway.”

Janet pondered this solution, but waited before engaging the man to dig the holes. “I’ll think it over and let you know. I must not go into debt for this business, and I spent all my money for the fowl and pigs, yesterday.”

“Well, I’ll leave them bags with the chickens in ’em, until you fixes a coop for ’em. I kin take home the bags any time,” returned the farmer, then he went back to the wagon and climbed in.

Janet watched him go as if the last friend on earth was about to vanish, but she would not ask him to help her dig holes for the young trees which she now planned to chop down in the woods. So Ames drove away and Janet sat down on the crate to revise her old building plan for the pen.

“Pshaw! The darlings have to be taken out of this box without delay. And chopping trees and digging holes means delay. I’ll just go on and finish this fence as I started it, and build a stronger and better pen afterward.”

So she jumped up and stuck the fallen post back in the shallow pit and tamped down more earth about it. The other posts were planted in the same manner, and then Janet began to arrange the lath and boards upon these shaky posts.

There was little difficulty in nailing the light boards to the sides of the old sty, but when she began to hammer the nails to the post, she found matters to be very different. With the first hard blow from the hammer, the post leaned. With the second blow, it wobbled suspiciously. Janet frowned and straightened it from inside the pen. Then she braced a board against its side to force it out the other way. By holding it carefully on one side while she tried to hammer the nails in on the other side, the post stood the test—but Janet did not.

She paid more attention to the hand that held the post than she did to the direction the hammer took. Her thumb was quite close to the nail she planned to drive into the wood, while her four fingers circled the post and were on the opposite side to the thumb. When the hammer came down with great force, it glanced from the wire nail and landed on her thumb nail instead.

“Ou-ouch! Whe-ooo-ah! Ooh-ooo!” howled Janet, dancing wildly and holding her thumb while she tried to ascertain how badly it was crushed. To her further annoyance she found there was not a bit of blood or other sign to have caused such severe pain. So she began sucking her thumb loudly in order to ease its jumping pain. Then she examined it again; still no visible testimony of injury.

“Wouldn’t Rachel haw-haw if she knew this! She said a hammer made lots of trouble for one. But I won’t tell a soul of the old thing!” So deciding, Janet got up and renewed her efforts at building.

The call for dinner interrupted her carpentry, hence she dropped the hammer and nails with a sigh of relief and ran for the house. As she ran, she heard the pigs squealing in the crate, but she held both hands over her ears until she was in the house where their sounds could not be heard.

“Well, Janet, how goes the barn yard work?” asked Natalie.

“Splendidly, Nat! I’ve almost got the pig pen done. And Ames brought the fowl this noon. I’ll have to finish that chicken run so I can let them out of the feed bags.”

Rachel was bringing in the soup at this moment and overheard the reply. “Does yoh mean to say dem hens ain’t out of dose bags, yit?”

“No; Ames said it wouldn’t hurt them to wait while I build the coops. But he did say that the pigs must be removed from the crate or they will die. So I have to finish their pen first,” explained Janet.

“Den it will do dem hens good to run about and scratch a bit, Janet. All my fowl down Souf’ used to wander about. Dey lays better fer such exercises. Ef we opens dose bags inside the old henhouse and gets ’em acquainted wid surroundin’s, dey will come back to roost at night. Let ’em go about the place, says I, ’stead of baggin’ ’em up in Ames’s potato sacks,” advised Rachel.

As this was acceptable advice to Janet, and Mrs. James and Natalie seconded it, no time was lost after dinner in freeing the chickens from the feed bags. They were taken to the old chicken house and there released. Not only were the six Plymouth Rock hens and the highly colored cock glad to be free, but the eighteen little chicks showed their pleasure, too, by fluttering noisily about and scratching without further delay.

“Aren’t they wonderful birds!” sighed Janet, as she saw them all follow the rooster out of the run into the open barn yard back of the hen house.

“Yes,” added Natalie. “Now the place begins to really look like a farm, don’t you think so, Jimmy?”

“When we have that cow, and a calf that Janet wants, and other stock, we will realize it is a farm, not alone look like one,” laughed Mrs. James.

“Humph! I says dat when sech a time ’rives, it’ll be mos’ time fer my nephew, Sam, to jine us. Den it’ll need a man to help,” added Rachel, whose one great ambition was to find some need at Green Hill Farm whereby her orphaned Sambo would be called upon to hasten from the wicked city and devote his energies to farming.

Mrs. James inspected the fence Janet had worked so arduously upon that morning, but she had to hide a smile when she took hold of a post. “Will this pen soon be ready for the pigs, Janet?” she asked.

“I hope so, Jimmy,” sighed the carpenter.

“Natalie, what do you say if we remain to help Janet finish the fence so we can free the poor little pigs?” suggested Mrs. James.

“Oh, I think it will be fun, Jimmy. I’ll run back with Rachel and hunt up a hammer and some more nails.”

As there was but one hammer in the establishment, Rachel gave Natalie a hatchet to use. It had a flat head that could be used as a hammer if one were careful in wielding it properly. When Natalie returned to her friends, she found Mrs. James hard at work sawing some narrow boards in pieces of similar lengths and Janet was busy bracing the posts with short wooden stakes.

“I’d love to saw wood, Jimmy, while you help Jan nail the fences,” hinted Natalie, eagerly.

“Do you think you can handle a saw?” asked Mrs. James.

“Certainly! It is easier than making the fence.”

“You keep a knee on this end of the wood, you know, and hold the saw——” began Mrs. James, when Natalie interrupted.

“I know just how to do it, Jimmy, so don’t lose time!”

At this assurance from Natalie, Mrs. James handed her the saw and took the hatchet. She went over to help Janet brace the posts firmly, and left Natalie to her sawing.

Thus left alone, Natalie began to saw as she thought Mrs. James had done. She knelt upon one end of a board and began to work the saw up and down. But she used both hands to hold the handle of the saw and failed to steady the board with the left hand. She had not seen Mrs. James use one hand to keep the board from sliding about.

Once, twice, three—not all of three times did the saw gr-r-rate up and down through the wood, then all of a sudden the narrow board slid diagonally across the box and Natalie’s knee slid from under her. Down she came upon the box, skinning her arm from elbow to wrist upon the rough edges of the board.

Both Janet and Mrs. James came running at the cry of indignant surprise and pain from Natalie. She was twisting her neck in the attempt to ascertain how badly her forearm was disabled; but Janet reassured her thus: “Oh, it’s a mere scratch, Nat. You’d have something to wail about if you mashed your hand as I did this noon, when the hammer slipped and hit the wrong nail!”

Then Mrs. James patiently explained why the board slid. And Natalie began again while her two companions went back to erect the fence. All went well for a time, for Natalie was circumspect over the sawing. But even the greatest watchfulness will not always prevent mistakes, and so when Natalie sawed and sawed, and sawed without making any apparent progress through the narrow board, she called again for Mrs. James.

Janet followed, too, because she would not be left out of any interesting events in this carpentry work; besides, Natalie’s tone suggested that another thrilling experience was taking place.

“Why, my dear child!” laughed Mrs. James, when she saw what Natalie had been trying to saw through. “Didn’t you notice that the board was moved so close to the edge of the box that you were actually sawing through the three sides of this box as well as trying to go through the board?”

When the herculean task she had been striving to accomplish was revealed and demonstrated to Natalie, she dropped the saw and cried: “You saw wood, Jimmy! I’m going to hammer nails.”

Mrs. James laughed merrily and called after her: “But don’t hammer the wrong nail, Natalie!”

The hens had wandered away from the barn yard and were temporarily forgotten by the stock-farmer, but the pigs gave their owner no peace until the pen was thrown together in a sort of a way, and the crate carried to the enclosure. Mrs. James and Natalie helped release the cramped little creatures, and Janet stood inside the fence to take each one as it was removed from the crate.

It was a fortunate thing that they were too stiff from their close quarters in the box to be able to squirm and get away as they were lifted up out of the crate. But once they were at large in the pen they soon recovered their activities and raced about in excitement.

Mrs. James and Natalie stood watching them run and double back in their tracks and often strike against Janet’s shins with such force that she staggered in the pen; then Mrs. James said: “Better come out, Jan, and go for some mush to feed them.”

Unthinkingly, Janet climbed up by one of the corner posts and before she could reach the top slat in the fence, the whole structure fell over throwing her full length in the pen. The pigs were so frightened that they sought the shelter of the little shed and there huddled silently.

“Quick! Quick, Natalie!” called Mrs. James, seeing that the inevitable would happen if once the little pigs escaped from the pen. “Get me the box we used for a sawbuck—I’ll shut the pigs in the shed by standing the box against the door.”

Natalie ran for the box while Janet managed to get upon her feet again and try from within the pen to bolster up the fence. She managed to prop up the post but the weight of the boards made it sag hopelessly. Meantime, the box was used to close up the entrance of the shed and kept the pigs inside.

“It’s too late to work longer on this fence,” said Mrs. James. “The pigs are all right for the night, and we’ll repair the fence in the morning. But you must go to the house and prepare the corn meal and milk for them or they’ll squeal all through the night.”

Natalie and Janet eagerly cooked the mush and carried it back to the pigs, then gave them a fresh drink of water and left them. Janet suddenly stopped and gasped.

“Now what’s wrong?” cried Natalie, also stopping to gaze questioningly at her friend.

“The chickens, Nat!” was the hardly audible reply.

“Oh, the chickens!” added Natalie. “Where can they be?”

“I hope they have not lost themselves. I’ll never be able to collect them all again, if one went here and another there,” wailed Janet, then added as an afterthought: “And all my monthly allowance will be lost with them!”

But an encouraging cluck, sounding from the grass plot near the house, now cheered the two girls and they hurried there to find the chickens—big and little—eagerly picking up the scraps of food from the grass where Rachel had tossed them for the wild birds.

By dint of warily dropping corn in a trail that led to the barn yard, Janet succeeded in housing all the chickens that night. Then she gave them a generous supper of corn and locked them in the coop.

After Janet had housed the fowl Natalie smilingly glanced over at her gardens. “I guess I’ll run over and see how the greens are coming on,” murmured she, and started off.

Before she had gone very far along the pathway, Janet joined her and described how easy it was to catch chickens! Arm in arm they reached the first garden bed. But the awful cries and subsequent actions from Natalie caused both Rachel and Mrs. James to hasten from the house and fly across the lawn in order to learn the cause of the fearful commotion.

“See! Just look at my beautiful vegetables!” cried Natalie, pointing at the stumps of lettuce plants minus their blades of green, and those tender shoots dug out and wilted, beside the piled up heaps of soil.

Mrs. James and Rachel exchanged looks and frowned at Janet who had a suspicion of the truth. But Natalie never dreamed it might have been the chickens. She fumed and shook a fist at the woodland where a flock of crows could be heard cawing—cawing!

“I’ll rig up the most frightful scarecrow tonight and place it out in this lovely garden of mine; then let one of those black thieves dare to come again! They’ll see!” was the garden scout’s threat as she sent another malignant look over her shoulder at the tall tree where the crows laughed at her.

CHAPTER III

TRIALS OF A STOCK-FARMER

“You neglected little diary,” wrote Janet that night before jumping into bed. “I must say a word to you to let you know why I have not written to-day. Those noisy pigs, and the dreadful chickens kept me too busy for anything. I say ‘dreadful chickens’ advisedly, for they scratched up poor Nat’s little garden greens and left the vegetables in such a condition that I shall have to get up an hour before sun-up in the morning in order to help her replant the slips that were dug out of the soil. Rachel assured us that they would be all right again, in a day or two, if they were planted before the warm sun shone to wilt them. But Nat will have to place inverted flower pots over them during the heat of the day until they are fresh again. If she knew it was the fowl that did it what would she not do to me and to them!

“Oh, I almost forgot to say here, that Rachel when she ran at Nat’s awful yelling, to see what had happened, forgot she had left the potatoes boiling on the fire. When we came back to the kitchen door we saw smoke coming from it that would have made the scouts envious. Such a signal for trouble! No scout could ever have succeeded in warning others in such a distinct way that simply said, ‘Supper burning—come to rescue!’

“Phew! the whole house was filled with smoke. If you’ve ever burned potatoes to a cinder, you’ll know what it smelled like.”

Having finished her duty to the diary, Janet jumped into bed and was soon dreaming of giant pigs that were forever escaping from the pig pen, and flocks of chickens which scratched pits that went down to China.

Before breakfast the next morning, Janet and Natalie replanted the little slips that were dug out by the fowl, and Natalie sighed in relief when she saw the work finished. That morning while breakfasting, Janet plied questions for anyone to answer. It was Rachel who had the knowledge stored away because of past experiences down “Souf’” when she was a girl on a farm.

“How long does it take little pigs to become big hogs?” was Janet’s first query.

“Dat depen’s on how much you feeds ’em. Ef you guvs ’em all day kin eat, den you’ll soon see what grub kin do fer ’em,” was Rachel’s non-committal reply.

“Will three meals a day be enough?” asked Janet.

“What, t’ree! Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Rachel, shaking with amusement at such a silly question. “Pigs eats a meal every time you will guv it to ’em. And ’tween times dey noses and grunts about in the pen rootin’ fer more to eat. It don’t matter how soon after one meal you feeds ’em again—dey is always hungry and ready to eat.”

Mrs. James laughed at Rachel’s graphic explanation but she agreed with her.

“I should think they’d have indigestion,” Natalie ventured.

“Dat’s an ailment dey don’t know nuttin’ of, but little pigs is easy to die. I shoulden’ wonner but what Janet will have one er two of her’n die on her han’s dis summer. But not f’om dyspepsy!”

“Dear me, Rachel,” was Janet’s worried reply. “If pigs die as easy as that, where will the dividends of my investment come from? Think of what they cost to feed? Why, I used two quarts of milk yesterday besides that bag of cornmeal I bought off Tompkins. I figured it would last a week, and they ate all of it at one supper!”

“Yeh, I ’grees wid you, Janet—pork is ’spensive meat, but it am so sweet ef it’s cooked wid cabbitch an’ seasoned wid pertaters!” Rachel’s smack and the way she rolled her round eyes ceiling-ward caused her audience to laugh merrily at the pantomime.

Rachel ate her breakfast in the kitchen and as she ate, she planned to help Janet with those pigs. Perhaps there would be a chance for a feast of spare ribs and cabbage in the fall.

While Janet and she were repairing the fence directly after breakfast, the former continued her thirst for information.

“Rachel, what did you mean when you said that pigs were hard to raise. What can make them die easy if I feed them all they can eat, and keep them safely in the sty?”

“I diden’ say dey died ‘easy,’ Janet, ’cuz I’ve seen ’em die orful hard! Once hog-cholery gits ’em no one kin say dey dies easy,” was Rachel’s lugubrious reply.

“What I meant to say was, are pigs quick to catch things?”

“It all depen’s on what you hast to cotch. Now I don’ see no spechul reason why dese pigs mus’ get hog-cholery, toomerkolosis ner anything what goes perwailing about the country down Souf’. Ef you-all gives ’em pure air, an’ fattenin’ grub widdout much swill, an’ scrubs the sty once a week, why should dey get complainin’?”

“I’m sure I don’t see why they should, either, Rachel,” admitted Janet, driving a nail so forcibly that it went half through the decayed wood.

“Sam—dat’s my sister’s son, you know, Janet—Sam says he read in a paper, one time, how dem orful slaughter-houses out west feeds doze pigs wid leavin’s f’m dead cattle. Dat’s what makes fer disease, Sam says. Jus’ think of it, Janet! Us smackin’ our lips on roas’ pork what’s raised on sech sickenin’ clean-up affer all the cows and steers and sof’ little lambs, is butchered!”

Janet shivered with disgust at the picture Rachel painted so vividly for her, but Rachel was on the “Stump” and paid no attention to her companion’s tremors.

“Now dese pigs of your’n, dey will be sweet eatin’ and no danger in carryin’ germs of toomerkolosis in the meat. We will keep the swill clean and feed ’em onny what makes fer big lusty hogs,” promised the eloquent maid-of-all-work.

“I read in a book on stock raising, that pigs should never have swill fed them,” suggested Janet. “And you spoke of cleaning their sty once a week to keep it clean. The book says every pig-pen should have a sunken bath with fresh water in it daily so the pigs can bathe. It states that pigs are the cleanliest of all animals if they are given the chance to wash and eat as they like. It mentions the wild boars—how they bathe in pools many times during the course of the day, and prefer nuts or acorns to any other food.”

Rachel stood so amazed at hearing that a pig would take a bath if given the opportunity, that she unconsciously dropped the hammer. Unfortunately it struck on a pet bunion and made Rachel sit down on the ground and hold her injured joint while she rocked to and fro with the pain.

Then she got up and snarled angrily, while she shook a fist at the innocent porkers: “Dat settles it! Yoh fix your own pen, you squeelin’ critters!” and away she went to the house.

When Natalie joined Janet at the pig pen and heard how Rachel blamed the pigs for dropping the hammer on her inflamed joint, Natalie laughed and said, wisely: “She was peeved, Janet, because you knew something about pigs that she had never heard of before. I’ve learned that Rachel loves to be referred to for information when it touches anything she had down south. She considers pigs a personal line that she excels in, and such a surprise as having pigs yearn for a bath was too much for her.”

The fence had been reinforced and Janet now stood looking in at the pen. Natalie watched her for a few moments and then said: “What are you thinking of?”

“I was wondering if we could sink a porcelain tub in the yard where my pigs could bathe whenever they liked. I’d want them to have every modern convenience, you know.”

The way Janet said this made Natalie laugh. But she said: “They are still shut up in the shed. I’d suggest that we let them out and give them their breakfast before we decide on porcelain tubs and open plumbing.”

“If you will get the feed, Natalie, I’ll open the door and catch them as they come out. I think as they are so fond of bathing I will wash their little faces to make them feel better.”

Giggling to herself but not feeling experienced enough in the matter of raising a pig-family to say that washing their faces was a luxury that was taxable in various ways, Natalie went for the breakfast. She returned in time to see her best friend sprawled out in front of the shed-door, and three lively little pigs running and jumping over her prostrate form.

But their activities were soon concentrated when the pan of warm mush was shoved into the pen. Such a grunting and pushing at each other as those three pigs did, made both the girls laugh.

Then Natalie said: “Jan, Rachel told me while she was mixing this mush, that your pigs will need from six to eight quarts of milk each day and a peck of corn-meal, if you only feed them on this stuff.”

“Oh, Nat!” gasped Janet, quickly figuring. “And milk is fifteen cents a quart when called for at Ames’s farmhouse!”

“You’ll simply have to feed them table-scraps, Jan.”

“When we go to Four Corners again, I’m going to ask Mr. Tompkins what he feeds his pigs. I won’t ask Mr. Ames, because he wants to sell me the milk, but the storekeeper will tell.”

There Janet learned that she could and should feed the pigs with bran, boiled potatoes or the parings, all the greens that were cut from the vegetables, wheat screenings and middlings, and whatever table-waste was wholesome and clean for the pigs to root about in at odd times between meals.

Janet also learned from Si Tompkins, that it was not necessary to buy straw and bed the pigs down every night with it; but dry leaves, or dead hay, mixed with a little straw was as good for bedding as anything. A list of the grain was made and ordered from the mill that stood on the road to White Plains, and then Janet felt more resigned to stock-raising than she had been all that day.

On the way home Natalie remarked: “I should think any animal would grow big and fat on such a diet as Tompkins suggests.”

“I was thinking that we could feed the pigs your garden greens when we haven’t any left at the house,” was Janet’s reply.

“No siree! My garden greens stay exactly where they are—in the ground. When they are grown enough to harvest I’ll see that we eat them ourselves,” she said.

“Oh, I didn’t mean now—I meant that the pigs might eat the tops while we eat the bottoms. Turnips, beets, and such,” explained Janet.

“That’s different. But remember, Jan! My vegetables mean as much to me, and cost my spending money, too, as your stock does to you. So don’t send your cattle over into my preserves to feast; because I’ll shoot the first poacher I see in my garden,” threatened Natalie. But it never dawned upon her mind that the fowl had already poached.

As the two friends approached the house they heard Rachel complaining to Mrs. James. “Dese aigs what we got f’om Four Corners ain’t fresh a bit. Why, I foun’ two bad ones in dat udder box and now here’s anudder one in dis new box.”

Mrs. James took the box and examined the shells keenly. Then she said: “Rachel, they look like old preserved eggs.”

“Yas’m. Dat’s what I say. In fack, I mought say dey is been pickled down in water-glass at some remote day,” remarked Rachel.

“I’m afraid so, Rachel. Tompkins should not sell such eggs for fresh ones,” and Mrs. James shook her head disapprovingly.

“Dat las’ box we got f’om him, I spiled a good cake when I cracked an egg inter two more what I had in a bowl. An’ dat las’ one what Natty and Janet lef’ after scramblin’ dem udders on a sly, dat was a bad one, too.”

Janet and Natalie exchanged looks at this information, but the word “water-glass” meant nothing to them so they forgot Rachel’s complaints over the quality of the store-eggs.

The supper was very late that night, owing to the bad eggs that had ruined the batter Rachel had mixed for cakes. That evening the girls planned eagerly with Mrs. James about adding other interesting creatures to Janet’s farm yard stock. But it always ended in Janet’s sighing about her limited bank account.

“We might ask Mr. Marvin to loan us fifty dollars and take a chattel mortgage on the stock,” said Mrs. James.

“We might, but I hate to think anyone else has a hold on my pets. If only I could find some way to own them all myself!” was Janet’s rejoinder.

“Well, let’s go to bed now, girls, as I am sleepy,” said Mrs. James, getting up from the side-porch and going indoors.

Just after every one was in bed and comfortably relaxed for sleep, a shrill cry from Janet caused them to jump up and run to her room to learn what was wrong.

“Oh, oh, oh! The poor things!” wailed she, sitting on the edge of the bed and wringing her hands, dramatically.

“What poor things! Are you dreaming, Jan?” asked Natalie.

“Who is it, Janet?” anxiously inquired Mrs. James while Rachel came scuffling into the room holding a candle to light her way. Her kinky hair was wound up in little cotton covers for the night, and she wore the old-fashioned short sack-gown, with a flannel petticoat underneath to keep the witches away.

Natalie had to giggle but Janet was too concerned to see what Rachel was wearing. She turned regretful eyes up towards Mrs. James as she confessed: “Those poor chickens! I forgot to feed them tonight, because Nat and I spent so much time watching the pigs burrow under the leaves and straw and then curl up to sleep!”

Mrs. James suddenly sat down upon a chair near the bed and laughed with relief. Janet looked at her in sad disapproval. “If it was your fortune that was fading away, you might not think it so funny! Now those hens won’t lay an egg to-morrow and another day will be wasted. Rachel said hens wouldn’t lay if they were not fed regularly.”

“Dat’s so, Mis James! An’ dem spechul hens ain’t had no ’tentchun, whatever, sence Janet brought ’em to live in her barnyard,” was Rachel’s emphatic rejoinder.

Natalie now giggled forth: “At least we can eat them if we find them dead on their roosts in the morning.”

“It’s all right for you to laugh, but you won’t offer to go out with me at this midnight hour and give them some supper!” wailed Janet, picking up her sneakers and trying to pull them up on her bare feet.

“Whad you doin’ dat foh, Honey?” asked Rachel.

“Going to feed the measly chickens,” grumbled Janet.

“Tain’t no use. Go back to bed and fergit ’em.”

“Oh, do you think they are dead?” gasped Janet, fearfully.

“Nah! I betcher it ain’t de fust time dey went to baid on empty stummicks when Farmeh Ames owned ’em. Once moh won’t kill ner cure ’em of trouble,” chuckled Rachel, turning to go back to her room. But she remembered something and laughingly added: “I tought dis house was on fiah f’om the way Janet yelled. Nex’ time you fergits a pig, er a hen’s refreshmen’s, don’t make sech a time oveh it.”

“I’ll tie a string on my finger after this so I won’t forget the poor things again,” sighed Janet, kicking her sneakers across the room.

“I don’t see how you can forget that poor setting-hen, Janet; she has to hatch out all those eggs for you,” was Natalie’s reproof.

“How many eggs did you place under her, Janet?” asked Mrs. James, trying to act interested but hiding a great yawn back of her hand.

Janet counted on her fingers and then said: “Seven and nine—sixteen altogether, Jimmy.”

But Mrs. James did not pursue the subject at that time, for she naturally thought that Janet had taken the eggs which Farmer Ames had brought that day. Whereas, Natalie had helped herself to nine more eggs from the box when it came from the store, and the two girls had shoved the extra eggs under the hen at evening-time. Then the inspected eggs which Ames left at the house, were quietly smuggled into the box for Rachel to use, in place of those which had been taken out.

Soon after this the house was quiet again, and the inmates slept soundly until the cock roused them with his loud crowing from the handrail on the back stoop.

“Now how did he escape?” wondered Janet, as she hurriedly dressed.

She never discovered how he managed to get out, but she felt sure it was because he was starving. So she fed the fowl an extra big breakfast to make up for not giving them any supper.

CHAPTER IV

TENDERFOOT SCOUTS OF SOLOMON’S SEAL TROOP

Having given the setting hen enough feed to last a week, Janet went to the pig pen. She never leaned heavily on the fence, now, but she shoved the pan of food under the fence where one of the porkers had rooted a hole. After watching them fight and grunt madly for the mush, she laughingly turned and went to have one more look at the expectant mother-hen.

She was so perturbed at finding the eggs uncovered and the hen out in the yard gossiping with the other fowl, that she ran quickly to the house.

“Jimmy! Jimmy! Where are you?” she called excitedly.

“On the side-porch writing a letter for catalogues,” came the answer.

Janet ran out there and exclaimed: “Jimmy, that old setting-hen got up to have breakfast and she never went back to her business of hatching those eggs. What will happen, now?”

“Hens must eat and drink and exercise, you know, but they seldom remain off the eggs for any length of time. How long do you think she was away from the nest?”

“She was still out in the chicken-yard when I came back, just now. I should say she’s been off for twenty minutes, at least.”

“You had better go there and see if the eggs are chilled. Just barely touch them, but do not take them up in your hands,” advised Mrs. James.

“Another thing, Jimmy,” added Janet, sadly. “There wasn’t an egg in either of the other nests. I suppose the hens wouldn’t lay because I forgot their supper.”

Natalie was interested in this case of retribution.

“Will hens lay better the more you feed them, Jimmy?” asked she.

Mrs. James laughed. “I know they must be fed regularly for best results in egg-laying. They are much like other creatures—they need food at certain intervals. But I have heard that they will lay better if they do not have too large a range to run in.”

“Then I’ll build a smaller yard for them,” declared Janet, emphatically. “They must lay eggs or I’ll not be able to pay the corn and feed bills.”

“I’ll go with you, Jan, and figure out how big to have the new yard,” suggested Natalie.

Finding that the setting-hen still neglected her duty to the water-glass eggs, the two girls decided to use compulsion. They tried to lay hands on the wise old hen but she adroitly avoided arrest. Then ensued a chase that so frightened the other chickens that they screeched fearfully and fluttered about in every direction.

Finally the rooster found his way in at the small opening whence the old hen had come out, and immediately after him ran all the hens and young chicks. Janet had left the door of the coop open when Natalie and she went in to attend to the setting hen, and now the fowl all escaped that way into the barnyard.

“Oh, let them go! The old things!” snapped Natalie, as she counted the scratches and streaks of dirt on hands and dress.

“We’ll hurry and move this chicken-fence in until we think the yard is the right size,” suggested Janet, finding the old fence was shaky.

“No, don’t waste time on this old rickety fence, Janet. We’ll measure the ground and order chicken wire from Four Corners. That will make a durable fence and be easier to tack on to the posts than all this slat-affair,” advised Natalie.

Janet agreed with her so they took a ball of string to find out the length of wire they must order. They had quite forgotten the setting-hen until she came clucking nonchalantly up to the door of the coop.

“Oh, mercy! Nat, that hen has been off those eggs fully an hour, by this time,” cried Janet, anxiously watching the creature climb back and settle down upon the eggs.

An angry shout, sounding from the direction of the garden, made the girls look over that way. There was Rachel shaking her gingham apron wildly and Mrs. James waving her arms like a windmill, while both women were crying: “Shoo! Shoo! S-s-s-s-h-hoo!”

With dismay expressed upon her face, Natalie started to run to succor her precious vegetables; Janet followed closely in her tracks. The hens had had time enough to reach the tempting greens, however, and several shoots of lettuce were nipped off, while a row of young tender beet-tops was gone.

“Oh, oh! You miserable birds! I’ll wring your necks and enjoy eating you, after this!” screamed Natalie, as soon as she saw the damage done to her garden-truck.

“If the exasperating old beasts won’t lay enough eggs to pay back for this stealing, you shall have them to eat, and with pleasure, Nat!” declared Janet, angrily stoning the cackling hens.

Rachel stood wondering over the information she had just heard, then she said to Janet: “Ain’t dem hens done laid no eggs yet?”

“No they haven’t, Rachel. And my bookkeeping is all on the debit side. If it keeps on without any credits to jot down, I’ll never have a cent for candy, or anything!” complained Janet.

“Miss James must be right. Dem hens get too much freedom. Now we’ll lock ’em up in a coop and see what we shall see!”

So the four amateurs drove the fowl by devious ways, back to the chicken-yard, and Rachel closed their exit to the run by sliding a board in front of the opening.

“Let ’em sit down and think about it, honey, an’ mebbe they’ll lay some eggs.”

On the way back to the house Janet said: “How much are fresh eggs, Jimmy?”

“I really do not remember, but I’ll look at Tompkins’ bill when we reach the house,” replied Mrs. James.

“Eggs fresh from the nest are worth more than store-eggs, aren’t they?” continued Janet.

“Oh, yes, if they are guaranteed strictly fresh eggs.”

“Well, I won’t charge a cent more than the store does, because I’m using the barn and other things, you know,” said Janet.

“Other things mean lettuce and beet-tops, I s’pose,” laughed Natalie.

That day two letters went from Four Corners post office to addresses in New York, requesting that catalogues be mailed at once. The one of garden seeds was to be sent to Natalie Averill, and the one about fowl, pigs, and other stock was to be sent to Janet Wardell.

When Rachel heard that Natalie was planning to buy more seeds and plant them in an additional garden which she wished to have ploughed up, she said sarcastically:

“Honey, you’se is too easy in believein’ all dat talk in dem cat-logs. Nobuddy ever saw a cabbige grown as big as a house, ner did any beets ever raise up higher’n a man’s head. If wegetables growed like dem cat-logs say dey do, farmers’d have to harwest garden truck wid timber derricks.” The loud haw-haw that ended this comment made the others join in the laugh.

“I usta say dem comic pages in our Sundy papers was the bigges’ lies I ever saw, cus they egssaderate so bad, but dese farmin’ cat-logs kin beat comic papers all holler.” Rachel turned back to her kitchen work after unburdening her soul of the way seed-dealers misled the public.

Solomon’s Seal Scouts called at the house that afternoon, and the hostesses as well as the guests had a good time. The object of the visit was to invite the two girls at the house to attend a council meeting at camp the next day.

“Oh I hope the other girls will be here in time to go! We’re expecting them any time, now, you know,” exclaimed Natalie.

“We can have the council in the afternoon instead of in the morning, if you think they may arrive in time to attend,” said Miss Mason.

“Oh, yes! That will give them the whole morning to get here. I’m sure they’ll be crazy to visit the camp and see everything,” returned Natalie, eagerly.

“Say!” now Janet said impressively. Every one looked at her and waited for some surprise to be forthcoming. “When Ames drives past to the Corners for the evening’s mail, we’ll send word to the three village girls to be sure and come to the house to-morrow afternoon to go with us to the council!”

As is told at length in the book preceding this one, how the village scouts hailed the invitation to attend council, and how the three city girls arrived in time to not only receive a warm welcome at Green Hill Farm, but also to visit the woodland camp the same afternoon, we will not repeat the narrative here.

But one thing the girls of Patrol Number Two decided to do after they had witnessed the scouts of Patrol Number One go through their “setting up exercises,” demonstrate for the benefit of the visitors how they could make wildwood beds, cook without metal pots or pans, make fire with two sticks, and read the secret signs of the woods in stones, twigs, grass and trees, and that was that no time was to be lost if the new scouts wished to catch up with their more experienced scout-sisters.

Rachel had had ample time that afternoon to prepare a tempting supper for the village girls, and when Mrs. James found the table had been set out on the side-porch she smiled with appreciation. During the supper the enthusiastic scouts talked of nothing else but the valuable knowledge Patrol Number One had acquired.

“It means, girls, that we each must devote plenty of our spare time to the studying of our handbook, ‘Scouting for Girls,’ for there we shall find just what Miss Mason’s scouts found,” said Mrs. James.

CHAPTER V

THE POULTRY GO ON STRIKE

The five girls of Green Hill walked along the country road a ways with the girls from the village, and then returned to the farm. As they turned in at the gate opening to the side-path leading to the porch, they distinctly heard the pigs squealing as if they were being tortured. They found Rachel in a piazza rocker, swaying back and forth furiously while she strained her eyes in the semi-darkness for a sight of the delinquent stock-scout. The moment she heard the group of girls as they approached the house, she shouted angrily:

“Is dat Janet wid you-all?”

Being assured that Janet was one of the party, Rachel continued: “How kin you go off sky-larkin’ likes-how-you-do, Janet, aknowin’ dem pigs is starvin’? I tells you it is such cruelty to anermals as I never seed!”

“I’m awfully sorry, Rachel, but I had intended going to feed them when Jimmy said she thought it would please our visitors if we accompanied them a short distance along the road,” said Janet, apologetically.

Rachel dared not criticise Mrs. James’s motives or advise, so she jumped up from the rocker and snapped shortly: “Come and fetch dis mush out to dem at onct!”

“I wish one of you girls would come with me and hold the light,” ventured Janet, looking around at the faces in the semi-darkness.

“I’ll go with you, if you like, Jan,” offered Norma when no one else seemed over-anxious to take advantage of the invitation.

As Janet went to the kitchen to get the pan of corn-meal, Rachel added shortly: “Feed dem good ef you expecks us to git any sleep tonight!”

The girls sitting on the steps of the porch knew to a certainty the moment the pigs got their supper, for the tumult ceased suddenly. It was silent evidence that they were busy with the tardy supper.

Early in the morning, Rachel roused the household by shouting wildly: “Dem fowl’s got out and are in Natalie’s wegetables! Da’s whad comes f’om not feedin’ ’em supper afore bedtime!”

So Janet wearily ran out and raced about, first shooing away one hungry hen and then another, but finally calling on all her friends to help round them up and drive them back to the coop.

“I never knew anything to be more misappropriately named—Plymouth Rocks. The way those horny birds can skip around beats everything!” declared Janet, as she collapsed on the kitchen steps and wiped her streaming face.

“You’ve just got to keep them locked up until that new wire fence is finished, Janet,” commanded Natalie, angrily. “I’m not running a truck-farm for your stock to eat up.”

“Poor Nat! She has done nothing since the barnyard pets came, but replant vegetables twice a day,” laughed Belle.

After breakfast Janet said she would go to Four Corners and bring back the wire so that no time need be lost in immediately starting the fence.

“I’ll go with you, Jan, and help carry it back,” offered Belle.

“So’ll I, Janet,” added Frances.

Norma had too much to do in planting flowers, to think of accompanying her friends, and Natalie was too angry to offer to assist in any way in curbing the chickens’ escapades. So the three girls started for the store, leaving the poultry locked securely in the hen-house until such times as the runway was safely inclosed.

But they had not been gone very long, before Frances’s father and mother drove up in the automobile. It was Norma who suggested that Mr. Lowden play the Good Samaratin and go for the girls, to help them bring back the roll of wire-netting. So the girls and their wire were soon back again at Green Hill, as I told you fully, in the first book.

Then the main object of the Lowdens’ visit was explained, and the rejoicing of the girls was vociferous and deafening. When high spirits had been calmed somewhat by Mr. Lowden’s warnings he left the car for them to use that summer.

Frances said: “I think it is a strange coincidence that only last night I should write Daddy a letter and asked him this very great favor. All the time he and Mother were planning it.”

After the Lowdens had gone, Janet said she must begin work on the chicken-fence. Mrs. James offered to go with her and help, and Belle said she might as well go, too. Frances had driven her parents to the station, so she was not there to be drafted into service for Janet.

Janet unrolled the entire length of wire upon the ground and then stood studying it, as if for inspiration of how to handle it. Mrs. James watched her, and finally remarked:

“Why did you get it so wide, Janet? It’s five feet, at least, and you really do not need it any wider than three feet.”

“I was afraid the chickens would fly over if it was only three feet high,” explained Janet.

“Well you’ve got it now, so let’s get busy and put it up,” was Belle’s sensible advice.

“You go over to the other end of the wire, Belle, and stand on it to keep it from flying back as it does every time I move it,” suggested Janet, because the netting rolled itself up just when it was not expected to.

Mrs. James supplied herself with a mouthful of nails, and a few extra ones in her hand that held the hammer, then went to the first post in the row. She turned to tell Janet what to do but the nails in her mouth kept her from being understood so she had to remove them before she could speak intelligibly.

“I said for you to drag the wire over to me so I could nail one end to this post,” she repeated.

Janet did as she was told, but Belle had stepped from the other end of the wire to get the box so that Mrs. James might put the nails back in the box instead of back in her mouth. Consequently, the moment Janet began to lift the end of the wire the rest of it rebounded like a live thing. It coiled so unexpectedly and suddenly that the opposite end flew up, the ragged ends of the wire scratching Janet’s face and then catching in her fluffy hair.

“Ouch! Someone come and get this out of my hair, please!” cried the girl, tears in her eyes.

“Hold perfectly still, for a moment!” called Belle, running over to her assistance.

“Ooh—oo—uch! That hurts, Belle!” cried Janet, as the wires tugged at her hair unmercifully when Belle tried to untangle them. Then she had to call upon Mrs. James to help.

Frances had returned and, from Rachel, heard that the three had gone to the barn to build a chicken run, so she joined them there. She was just in time to hear Janet wail pitifully, and see the free end of the wire twist and writhe. This, of course, made the other end pull the harder on Janet’s hair.

“Wait! I’ll stand on this end so it can’t move. Then you can work better,” called Frances, jumping upon the wire as she spoke.

When the hair was freed at last from the hold of the wire ends, Mrs. James advised Frances to remain standing where she was to hold down the netting where it belonged.

“I’ll hold it with my hands and when you want to drag it over to the post, just call to me and I will crawl over with it, while holding it to keep it from jumping again,” said Frances.

As this was considered a very clever plan, it was approved and Mrs. James again took hold of the wire to nail it fast to a post.

“There now, Janet, while Belle holds it right in this position, you can nail it down all along the edge. Drive the nails about six inches apart, from the top of the post to the bottom,” said Mrs. James, handing the tools to Janet.

“Where are you going?” wondered the stock-farmer.

“I’m going back to the house to get a large pair of shears. We will need them to cut off the ragged ends of wire when we reach the side of the chicken-house.”

When Mrs. James had gone, Janet said: “Let’s see if we can have all the wire up before she gets back. It looks awfully easy to nail.”

They were so engrossed in nailing the wire, beginning at the top of the post and fastening it down the outside of the post, that neither of them realized the mistake they were making. Having nailed it securely for halfway the length of the post, Janet found the netting resist her efforts to fit in closely. She stood back to seek an explanation for this and cried, “Oh!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Belle, seeing her angry face.

“I never thought to measure the old post. Neither did Jimmy. Our wire is five feet wide and that post can’t be more than three and a half feet high. Now just look at that wire!”

They looked, but that did no good at this late moment. The extra one and a half feet of wire overlapped on the ground and was of no use there. It kept the wire from fitting snugly to the post, that was all.

“We’ve got to pull the nails out again, Janet, and begin to nail the wire down to the post, starting from the bottom up,” suggested Belle, eyeing the problem judiciously.

“And I hit those nails so hard—just to make them stay put!” sighed Janet.

“Don’t let’s waste words over what was done wrong, but let’s find a way to get the nails out again,” advised Frances, wisely.

“What can I use to pull them with?” asked Belle.

“That’s a claw-hammer. Use the claw on the other end of the handle,” said Janet.

So Belle managed to worm a way under each nail and get the claw underneath so it gripped the head of the nail, and then she bent the handle backward until the nail came out. After many mishaps, all the nails were out but they were so misshapen that they had to be flung away as useless. Then the two girls fitted the wire at the bottom of the post close to the ground, and began to nail down the wire, working upwards to the top of the post.

“It looks queer, sticking a foot and a half above the post, doesn’t it?” said Belle.

“I don’t care about looks. It is on right, this time, and that is the principle thing,” retorted Janet.

“Maybe the wire will prove to be so resistant that it will stand up above the posts, all right, when we get it all fastened to the places,” suggested Frances.

After this, the girls fitted the wire from post to post finding it a very difficult matter to lift and hold the twisty netting in place while it was being nailed flat to the posts. They had secured it to four posts on one side of the run and were trying to make it bend about the corner post so it could be nailed down and fitted across the end of the run-way too, when Mrs. James was seen coming back.

She stopped in dismay when she came near enough to see what was being done. The workers saw her expression and went over to her side to view the work from her vantage point.

“The wire runs uphill, girls. It fits, all right, at the first post, but from there on it gets higher and higher, from the ground, until it is a good fifteen inches above the ground at that corner post. Every chicken you have can walk under the gap, with its head erect. They wouldn’t have to stoop to crawl under,” laughed Mrs. James.

“Now how did that happen?” demanded Janet, ready to cry.

“We were most particular, Jimmy, about fitting it,” added Belle, frowning at the problem.

“Well, it can’t remain that way, you’ll agree with me,” commented Mrs. James.

“No, it’s all got to come down again,” sighed Frances.

“Here, Frans! You told us how to do it, and now you take this claw-hammer and work those nails out again. This time I’ll stand on the end of the wire and do the bossing,” said Belle.

Frances thought it was awfully funny, so she laughingly tried the claw-hammer to get out the nails. Several times the claw slipped and her hands were scratched, and once the hammer went right through the wire and she came, suddenly, with her face flat up against the wire. That was not so funny even though the other two girls laughed heartily at her.

When all the wire was laid flat upon the ground once more, it was found that the end that had been nailed to the first post was cut decidedly on the bias, and that accounted for the rest of the wire being fitted on a gradual incline as they ran it along the fence-line.

Before they could help Mrs. James cut the bias end to become a square end, Rachel came down the lane in order to see the finish of the fencing job.

“Well sakes! Ain’t you even begun yit?” was her comment.

“Certainly! We began twice, and this will be the third time,” retorted Janet.

“Whad’s the matter? Yoh ain’t got nuttin’ to show fer the work,” was Rachel’s reply.

“That’s because we are figuring on posts. The wire is five feet wide and the posts only three and a half. Perhaps we will have to get Ames to set up new posts, after all,” explained Janet, but she would not say a word to Rachel about the poor judgment she and her helpers had shown in running the fence skyward.

“I kin fix dat trouble in no time, honey,” declared Rachel, taking a look at the posts and then going to the barn.

When she reappeared she was carrying an armful of thick slats which she had found in the harness-room on the floor. She joined the waiting carpenters and threw the load upon the ground.

“I don’no what dese is foh, but dey is jus’ what you wants fer to lift dem postes up higher. Now give me dat hammeh.”

Rachel’s powerful arms soon had the slats nailed securely to the top of the posts so that they were extended two feet higher than they were before. The extensions were quite firm, too, so the girls again started to attach the wire to the first post.

“Say! You ain’t goin’ to bother wid all that wire while you air tackin’ on one piece, is you?” demanded Rachel.

“You don’t expect us to cut it in small lengths, do you?” asked Janet.

“Sure not, but do it dis way. Why use a hull length of wire at one time when you kin only work on one piece at a time? Now you rolls it up like dis”—Rachel demonstrated her words—“and stan’s it propeh like agin a post.”

Rachel stood the roll of wire upright against the post and nailed the end close to the post. Then she began unrolling the wire along the ground, while it was still in its upright position, but she stopped short, about midway between the two posts.

“Laws-a-massy-me! You gals ain’t got no grain of sense! Does yoh expeck dem fowl to sit in dat runway and not dig a way out unner dis wire? Dey’ll do dat fust chanst!”

“Is there anything we ought to do?” queried Janet, wishing all poultry in Timbuctoo.

“Suah! Run to the heap of ole lumbeh back ob dat barn and fetch me half a dozen bo’ads. All of you gals go foh ’em.”

In a short time the girls came back, each dragging a board under their arms. These were examined by Rachel and approved of. Then she took the first one which was about ten inches wide and nailed it inside the posts, so that it ran along the ground much like a base-molding is placed in a room where floor and side-wall meet.

“Now, you see, we kin nail dat wire fas’ to dis bo’ard and no hen kin scratch a way out t’roo a plank like dis is.”

Rachel remained to help them with the tiresome task, and when it was completed, it looked pretty good to the builders.

“I never dreamed that a little thing like a strip of wire was so hard to manage while turning it into a fence,” sighed Janet.

“It’s like mos’ t’ings, Janet—easy when you knows how to do ’em,” chuckled Rachel. “Now shove dat box away f’om the do’h of the coop so dem fowl kin run out in the mawnin’.”

“Why not tonight?” asked Belle.

“Oh, they’ve gone to roost before this,” said Janet. “They have been roosting all day, more or less, because they were in a dark house.”

Mrs. James picked up the hammer, and Rachel took the box of nails, and the two went back to the house, followed slowly by Belle and Frances who were talking over the recent carpenter work. Janet begged Norma to help her feed the pigs that night so she could finish before darkness fell.

“I won’t take the time to go to the kitchen and cook them a pot of mush tonight,” said Janet, as she led the way to the pig-pen. “But I’ll give them an extra measure of shorts and corn, for this once.”

The grain had been delivered the day before but Janet had not given the pigs more than a taste of it. Tonight, however, she supplied them liberally with corn and other grain until they actually ate slowly towards the last.

At supper, that night, which was very late because of the carpenter work, Norma spoke of the dry sandy quality of the flower-beds. “Mrs. Tompkins told me to examine the soil and if it was too dry to be sure and mix a good rich compost with the dry and lumpy dirt.”

“If you find the soil is too sandy, Norma, what did you plan to do about securing the compost?” asked Mrs. James.

“I was wondering if Natalie had any left from the cart-load Farmer Ames delivered here for the gardens,” replied Norma.

“No, we used every bit we had for the small vegetables,” explained Mrs. James. “But Natalie could use some more, to the best advantage, on the corn-field and the new garden she proposes to have Ames plough. So you two girls might share the costs for a load from Ames’ farm.”

“Why doesn’t Norma use leaf-mold, Jimmy? You said yourself that there was nothing like it. She can hire all the scouts to dig and carry it in baskets from the woods,” suggested Natalie.

“Mrs. Tompkins said that a good barnyard compost well mixed with the dry soil, was best of all manures for the flowers. But it must be thoroughly mixed. Then, she said, a fine leaf-mold was excellent for top-dressing. So I think I will listen to Mrs. Tompkins who has such wonderful results with her plants,” replied Norma.

“Yes, Norma is quite right to abide by the rule Mrs. Tompkins uses. No one in or near Four Corners has such flowers,” said Mrs. James.

“Well, then, Norma and I can order a load from Ames when we see him again,” said Natalie.

“We’ll see him drive past on his way to the store,” was Janet’s suggestion.

“If he doesn’t go past, I will leave an order at Four Corners for him to deliver the compost as soon as possible, shall I?” asked Frances.

“Yes, do, Frans, please!” exclaimed both girls in one voice.

“Write it on a card and then Tompkins can put it in his letter-box,” suggested Mrs. James.

CHAPTER VI

JANET RECEIVES ENCOURAGEMENT

The girls were aroused from sweet slumbers early the next morning by Rachel’s shrill calls. Each girl instantly fancied that some dire accident must have happened to her especial line of work, so they all ran to the platform of the stairway to look from the back windows where they could plainly hear Rachel’s voice.

What they saw was not an alarming cause for bankrupting their investments, but a ludicrous game that the fat mammy seemed to be playing with three little pigs.

Because Rachel was fat, she could not jump and turn as lithely as the lean little pigs. And having three tantalizing fugitives to chase and try to catch kept her on the “hop, skip and jump” exercise in a manner that would have made the girl scouts of Solomon’s Seal Camp green with envy.

She would all but catch one of the porkers when it would slip from under her out-spread, down-swooping hands. Inevitably such a dodge would precipitate Rachel upon her hands and knees. And the piggy would stand at a different point of the compass and look calmly at the breathless pursuer.

Multiply one wriggly, slippery, tricky little pig by three, and you will see that Rachel had no small contract that had to be attended to. Her shouts and the names she called the callous animals made the audience in the stair-windows shake with amusement. But they smothered their laughter so she wouldn’t hear them and so find out that she was being watched.

Now and then one of the pigs would break away through the hedge at the rear of the grass-place which was set apart for drying the clothes. Again one of them would keep its head turned in order to watch its pursuer, and thus come unexpectedly up against the side of the house, or bump into the clothes-poles. At such times a piercing squeal, not of pain but of sheer surprise, would make the cold chills creep up the girls’ backs.

When Rachel was tripped up by one of the wily fellows and suddenly made to sit plump upon the ground, her audience could no longer keep silence. A roar of laughter rang out from young throats, and the breathless, perspiring cook lifted eyes which expressed such heartfelt rebuke, that Janet jumped from the window-seat and started down the stairs, calling to the girls to follow her.

“Come on, girls, we’ve all got to help Rachel catch those little rascals,” said she.

When Mrs. James and the five girls joined Rachel on the grass in the rear of the house, there began such jumping and running, such calling and laughing, as never was heard in Westchester County since the days of the Revolution.

The three pigs acted obsessed. They led their pursuers back and forth, in and out of hedges, under clothes-lines, and what-not. They would pretend to lag, and just as the shouting victor swooped to catch him, the pig would double back upon his tracks and leave his chagrined pursuer flat in the grass. Finally the pigs seemed to become blase over this tame sport, so they all three put their heads together momentarily as if for a conference.

Rachel considered this the moment she had been waiting for, so she tip-toed over, silently beckoning the girls to surround the pigs.

But the pigs had other plans in view. They divided their forces. One ran down the garden path to Natalie’s truck-farm. One chose the driveway that ran down to the woods and stream. And the third pig took to the highway that ran to Four Corners.

The human forces also divided, now, to give pursuit to each individual deserter from the barnyard. Natalie and Janet raced after the pig which went for the gardens and the tender greens growing there. Rachel and two of the girls chased the pig which ran for the woods; and Mrs. James, with Norma, went after the pig which headed towards Four Corners.

The three individual units had experiences wild and varied for almost an hour, then two of the contingents successfully made “drives” for exhausted pigs, and that netted them two squealing prisoners. Mrs. James and Norma, however, kept on chasing their runaway, until the former said: “Norma, I’ll buy Janet another pig, but I refuse to run into Four Corners after that squealer! Fancy what Amity Ketchum will do. He’ll roll the funny incident under his gossipy tongue for ages to come!”

Norma laughed and shook her head. She was too breathless to speak. But Mrs. James had turned her back on the pig and its objective Four Corners, and started to trudge homewards.

It was a belated breakfast that morning, but the merriest one the girls had ever had. Such funny experiences as each girl had to narrate, kept them all laughing. And Rachel’s version of her race after the pig was not the least amusing, you can rest assured.

“Why, that slippery little rascal shot like an arrow from the bow, making straight for Natalie’s lettuce beds. I thought I had secured a ‘tackle-hold’ on him but he slid instantly out of my hands,” said Janet.

“Yes and he came plump into my shins and tripped me over him. I fell flat on my face in the potato-hills. One good thing that fall did, it frightened away a flock of potato-bugs,” laughed Natalie, when Janet had to pause for breath.

Now Janet took up the thread of narrative again. “In and out of the hills of corn and around the beanpoles he circled, until we both were dizzy. Everytime Nat or I thought we had him at a disadvantage we would swoop with open hands, only to find ourselves clutching a handful of dirt, and the little beast waiting a few feet distant as if to encourage us to keep up the game.”

The other girls laughed merrily at the description of the chase for this particular pig, and Rachel stood leaning against the pantry door, shaking with amusement.

“Girls, I never knew Janet could dance so wonderfully as she did while whirling about after the pig. Pavlova isn’t in it with our Janet! If we only had had a camera to take snap-shots of her high-kicking and leaping, she might have won a medal for her grace from the Girl Scout National Headquarters,” was Natalie’s conclusion to the story.

“How did you finally get him back to the pen?” Mrs. James wanted to know now.

“Why, in his mad circling he led us quite near to the barnyard, and it was Nat’s idea to entice him by means of a trough full of tidbits,” replied Janet “I realized that diplomacy was the only snare with which to catch pigs, so we left him standing with heaving sides and watching us suspiciously, while we filled the trough and dragged it out close to his snout.

“He was not equal to that temptation and fell instantly. Nat dragged the trough gradually back to the pen while I crept up behind the pig and the moment he had passed within the fence-gate, I closed it.”

“Have you any idea how he escaped the first time?” asked Mrs. James.

“Yes, one, or perhaps all three of the pigs burrowed under my slat fence and crept out through the tunnel they had dug,” said Janet. “But I rolled a rock into it and they’ll try a long time before they can move that obstacle out of the way.”

“Nat and you had a thrilling experience but there were only two to enjoy it. You should have been with Rachel and us—we raced to the woods after our pig, where there was so much room that there was no need for circling or doubling back in his tracks,” laughed Belle, at Janet’s conclusion.

“Miss Mason and her scouts heard the shouting and soon joined us in the chase. It must have looked exactly like one of the slap-stick movie comics where a long string of farmers, policemen, summer-boarders, and the heroine, chase the cross-eyed villain. But we managed to drive him—the pig, I mean—into one of the tents and before he could squirm his way out under the tent-flap, a dozen of us pounced upon him.

“I ought to be exact and say that one or two of us pounced upon the pig, while the other girls pounced upon each other! Then Rachel said: ‘Now you’se got him, whad yoh goin’ to do wid him?’

“We hadn’t thought of how we could get him back to the pen, but Miss Mason was equal to the emergency, as she is equal to anything, I do believe—and we soon had him in a burlap potato-sack. It was a simple thing to carry him back to the pen after that.”

When Belle had finished her narrative, all eyes turned to Mrs. James for her account of the chase, but she shook her head and said nothing. Norma laughed at their surprise, but kept silent.

“What’s the matter? Why don’t you tell us of the fun you had in catching your pig?” asked Janet.

“Nothing to tell,” was Mrs. James’ reply.

“Because we never caught the pig!” exclaimed Norma.

“What! Then where is he now?” asked Janet, aghast.

“You’ll have to consult an oracle for that information, Janet,” returned Mrs. James, calmly. “Norma and I are mere mortals, without the gift of a wooden ouigi board.”

Everyone but Janet screamed at this retort, but she ran to the side porch to gaze fearfully up the road that went to Four Corners. Nothing that resembled a wee pig was in sight.

“Come in and finish your breakfast, Janet,” called Norma.

“I want my pig. I’ve lost a week’s income on hens not laying, but I can’t afford to lose a pig, too!” explained Janet, returning to the table, nevertheless, and eating her breakfast.

“Janet, if two pigs fail to afford you all the trouble you want in the future, I agree to buy you a third trouble-maker. But I refused to expire of heart failure due to chasing that pig all the way to Four Corners!” was Mrs. James’ emphatic declaration.

But neither plan had to be followed, because Si Tompkins caught the vagrant pig as it wandered into his barn yard and tried to eat the chicken-corn he had scattered for his poultry. Then when Frances drove the car to Four Corners for the mail, she was handed the feed-bag with the pig curled up inside of it.

She took the bag and remarked laughingly: “Janet will be so glad to have her prodigal pig back again, Mr. Tompkins. But you can send her a bill for the corn he stole from you.”

Mr. Tompkins laughed as he said: “Tell Miss Janet not to become too fond of her pigs or she won’t want to eat them in the fall. She’ll act like my wife—I have to send her away on a visit from home when killin’ time comes around.”

Although Frances was delighted to recover the pig for Janet, she did not forget the message for Mr. Ames—to deliver a load of good compost at Green Hill as soon as possible. The order was placed in Ames’s post office box and he got it when he stopped for his mail.

Having a short time, that day, in which he could do a little extra job, he decided to take the manure to Green Hill Farm at once. No one was found in or about the house when he drove in at the side-gate, so he used his judgment and forked out the compost where he thought it was needed.

He had no idea that Natalie wanted half of it back in the garden, nor did he know that Norma was going into the floricultural business and wanted the rest of the manure for the flower-beds in the backyard where she was planting her slips and seeds.

He saw that the narrow beds running along both sides of the house and in front, had not yet been spaded over, so he thought the girls had planned to fertilize them and raise flowers there. Consequently, he spread the fresh compost all over these beds and then climbed back to his wagon-seat. He wiped his brow as he looked back at his finished work and murmured: “It’s out of their way up against those foundations, even if it isn’t just where they wanted it put.”

It was dreadfully warm that day, and the noonday sun fairly baked everything it shone upon. It shed the full power of its heat-rays upon the strips of ground where the compost had been heaped, causing the pungent odor from the fresh fertilizer to fill the air all about the house.

Mrs. James and Rachel had accompanied the girls to the farmyard to assist Janet in placing stout boards inside the pig pen fence to keep the little porkers from escaping again the way they had done before.

After Farmer Ames drove away Rachel came back to the house, smiling with gratification as she thought of the way she had bossed the construction on the pig-pen. But she had not reached the steps of the back stoop before she frowned. Then she wrinkled her flat nose and lifted her head to sniff audibly.

“Laws-ee! I mus’ta lef’ somethin’ on dat stove, and now it’s done gone and burned fit to smell us outen house and home!” was her instant comment as she rushed indoors.

But she found nothing on the kitchen stove, so she came out on the stoop again and sniffed a second time. This time it was a louder and a longer sniff. But all her sniffing failed to reveal the cause of the awful smell.

“Now dat’s funny. I could sware as soon as I git out on dis stoop dere is a smell of somethin’ like scorched wool, er a tan-yard, er a skunk. But it don’t smell in my kitchen, atall!” said she.

She had to give her attention to dinner, now, so no more time could be given to searching for the cause of an odor.

Mrs. James now came along the lane from the barn yard, and as soon as she came within the radius of the odor which had escaped from the compost, she sniffed faintly but without any unusual interest in the matter.

She too, entered the kitchen and asked Rachel if she had burned something on the stove; and the answer was that it must have been a passing automobile that had cheap gasoline in the tank, to have left such a stench as to fill the air all around the county.

But the girls soon followed after Mrs. James and they commented freely over the odor. Janet asked: “What can it be?”

“It isn’t singular—it is a plural smell,” laughed Belle.

“Yes, it’s a number of vile odors combined,” added Norma.

“Rachel must have left sour milk standing about, somewhere,” suggested Natalie.

The girls went in at the kitchen door instead of going to the side porch as they usually did, and Natalie immediately asked Rachel if she had sour milk in the kitchen.

“Sour milk! Laws-ee no, Chile! I uses all our sour milk fer pancakes,” returned Rachel.

“I noticed a bad smell too, when I came in, girls,” commented Mrs. James.

“Well, so’d I an’ I wonnered if I left somethin’ burnin’ but I diden’!” declared Rachel, beginning to sniff again.

The girls followed Mrs. James into the living-room, all sniffing audibly, and peering about for some cause for the smell.

“The smell in the dining-room is stronger than anywhere else, Jimmy,” remarked Natalie.

“I hope no stray cat or dog has found its way down to the cellar to die there,” ventured Mrs. James, suddenly thinking she had a clue.

“Let’s go down and see. We’ll take a flash-light and go into all the dark corners,” suggested Janet.

“We’ll open the outside cellar-way and let the sun shine in, too,” added one of the girls.

Mrs. James led the way out to the side porch to reach the cellar-door from that side of the house. But she had no sooner stepped down the steps than she quickly covered her nose with one hand and wildly waved the other hand to warn the girls back indoors.

“What is it?” everyone demanded excitedly, as Mrs. James ran in and slammed the door. Then she hurriedly went about the room closing all the windows.

“What has happened, Jimmy?” cried a chorus of girlish voices anxiously.

Then Mrs. James sat down in the rocker and laughed immoderately. When she could speak she said: “Well, I’ve discovered the cause of that tannery odor!”

Natalie ran and opened the door and stuck her head out to see. Then she, too, came back and laughed. “We’ve got to close all the windows and doors in the house until Norma removes the trouble.”

“Me? What have I got to do with it?” was Norma’s astonishing retort.

“Farmer Ames unloaded a cartful of compost right under the windows on both sides of the house and along the front,” was the reply. “And it has to be removed without delay or we’ll have to sleep with closed windows the rest of the year.”

“We all will help Norma cover the stuff, or carry it to the garden,” suggested Mrs. James.

So all hands were busily employed for a time, thereafter, in taking the compost which Natalie needed for the garden, to the land alongside the fence, while Norma and her workers carried what she needed for the flower-beds and spaded it under in the soil.

Natalie discovered that the weeds were trying to get a hold in her garden so she remained working and weeding, after the fertilizer had been removed from the proximity of the windows.

Frances and Belle went to Four Corners for Rachel who had to have a dozen eggs for baking purposes, so Janet sauntered to her farmyard to see if she could not find one egg in the nests. When nothing but the china eggs were found in the nests, she stood glaring at the large clumsy hens. She clenched her teeth and muttered: “I should think you’d all be so glad to lay eggs for me, after all the money and time I’ve given you just so you could live at Green Hill.”

Then she went to the separate nest where the setting-hen was expected to hatch the eggs. The moment Janet came near her, however, the old hen flew from the nest and ran out into the yard. As she had acted this way before, Janet thought nothing of it, but she took advantage of these absences to examine the eggs. Today she picked up one of the eggs to look for the pecking that would foretell the coming of a chick, but no such sign was visible in the shell.

Each egg was closely examined and as the last egg was found to have no chip in its surface, Janet sighed heavily. Just then, the egg slipped and fell upon the ground. Instantly a most dreadful odor filled the coop and drove Janet outdoors.

“Dear me! I suppose I have killed the chick that was in the egg, by letting it fall upon the floor,” was Janet’s thought, but she ran to the house to consult Rachel about it, and learn why a chick should smell so badly.

Rachel listened to the story and asked: “Does that ole hen leave them aigs fer long at a time?”

“She has been getting off the nest quite often the last few days, but I don’t know how long she remains away.”

“Den somethin’ is wrong wid dem aigs. No settin’ hen woul’ leave her nes’ fer nuttin’ ef she was gettin’ results f’om settin’!” was Rachel’s verdict.

As Janet knew nothing of the ways of setting hens, or the chicks that would surely follow from such devotion on the part of the hen, she made no reply. After a few moments of thought, Rachel added:

“Did Farmeh Ames sell you dem aigs foh fertilized kind?”

“Fertilized! Mercy no, Rachel. Natalie and I got the eggs from your pantry. We were in a hurry to get the eggs under the hen so we used the store eggs. But we made good the next day when Ames brought in the ones he had promised me.”

“Yoh diden go an’ set dem aigs what comes in pasteboard boxes f’om Foh Cornehs?” cried Rachel, astounded at such ignorance.

“Of course we did. They were the only eggs in the house, that night we wanted to set the hen.”

“Laws-ee, Chile! No wonder dat ole hen yearns to git off dose aigs so offen. Dey was water-glassed an’ nuttin’ neveh will hatch outen dem but trouble!” Then as the full truth dawned upon Rachel, she sank into a kitchen chair and threw her gingham apron over her head and swayed back and forth with hysterical laughter.

“Rachel, I tell you to stop laughing like that!” commanded Janet, highly indignant.

“Oh, oh, Oh! Dat am too funny foh anyt’ing!” gasped Rachel.

“What is so funny about it?” demanded Janet.

For answer, Rachel got up and started for the barn yard, closely followed by the stock-scout. Arrived at the chicken-house she found the hen still absent from duty, so she carefully removed all the eggs and put them in her apron.

“Now you waits till I burry dese out far f’om here, so no danger kin come of smashin’ ’em premature. Meanwhiles, you clean up dat smelly mess f’om dat floor, cuz no self-respeckin’ chicken will come in dis house wid dat perfume fillin’ the place.” Rachel chuckled as she ordered Janet about the task, then she went out.

The eggs were safely buried in the barnyard and Rachel came back to finish the work she had taken upon herself to do.

“Now you cleans out all dem nestes and put new straw in. I’ll wash out dis floor wid water and a broom to sweeten it”

When this was finished to Rachel’s satisfaction, she clucked to the setting-hen that had entered the opening from the chicken-yard and had stood upon one leg eyeing the work.

“You Jan, you runs to my kitchen, now, and carries back dat basket wid aigs whats standin’ on a shelf. And find a candle, too, and bring it along.”

“A candle! What’s that for?” asked Janet.

“I’m goin’ to candle ebery aig afore I puts it in dis nest All dem aigs is promised dat dey is strickly fresh, yistidy, but I aint goin’ to let you take any moh chances.”

When Janet returned with the eggs and the candle, Rachel said: “Did you eber see dat tiny speck what’s set in the yolk of most eggs?”

“Does it look like a dark drop of blood?” queried Janet.

“Yeh, da’s whad it looks like! Well, dat is all dere is to an aig foh hatchin’ pu’poses. Some eggs ain’t got no spot and dey won’t hatch chicks. I’ll candle the aigs we set to make sure dey is all right.”

“What would you call that speck?” asked Janet, more surprised at the ways of Nature than she could express.

“Dat’s its life-germ. Widdout dat no aig has life, dey says. But I ain’t no follower of all dem germ-fads, myself.”

Rachel selected fifteen good eggs and placed them in the straw, then she coaxed the hen back upon the nest and left her. As she left the chicken-house she said to Janet: “Don’t you go and han’le dem aigs, atall’. Ef you does, dat hen will get mad and stop hatchin’. Jus’ let hens mind their own bu’ness’ cuz they knows it better’n us.”

“I never knew the hen would mind my looking for the pecks in the shell.”

“Well, she do! Nature does that peckin’, on time, and you ner dat ole hen can do it fer Nature.”

But Janet had not told Rachel that the other eggs had been placed under the hen at various times, so she did not learn until she read it in the poultry book, that a hen will not remain upon eggs placed in the nest any later than the first lot.

On the way back to the house Janet complained: “Dear me, Rachel, I’ve lost all this time waiting for those good-for-nothing eggs to hatch out. I might almost have had a brood of chicks in another week.”

“Ain’t yoh glad we foun’ it out afore all dem aigs exploded and killed dat hen?” laughed Rachel. “Cuz dat’s de way of water-glass aigs, sometimes.”

“Really!” was Janet’s astonished exclamation.

“Yeh,” Rachel giggled. “I done hear once dat a dozen water-glass aigs hatched out a hull winderpane! Ha, ha, HA!”

Rachel’s shout of laughter was so appreciative of her own joke, that Janet joined in laughing despite the fear she still entertained that her poultry business was going bankrupt.

But Rachel sobered down as she reached the steps and she turned to encourage Janet. “Don’t you give up hope cuz dat lazy hen woulden manerfachoor plate glass for you, Chile. You keep on watchin’ dem nestes; now you locked your fowl up in a small yard you’ll get aigs, all right!”

With a loud chuckle, Rachel went indoors while Janet went to the side porch to sit and ponder over her problems.

But Rachel had planned a trick by which Janet would be encouraged, so she took the rest of the eggs from the basket on the shelf, and at the first opportunity, she got away from the house. She went to the barn by devious ways to avoid being seen, and then she placed the eggs in the different nests. This done she crept back to her kitchen work.

CHAPTER VII

THE FORTUNE IN KEEPING A COW

While Janet had been occupied at the chicken yard, Frances had brought home the “Stock Farmer’s Catalogue” that Janet had written for. It had come in the morning’s mail and now was on the porch table. Janet caught it up eagerly and sat down to pore over the pages. Soon she was deeply interested in reading about cows.

She read that the profit in keeping a cow was enormous. Saying that one cow milked but the minimum quantity of twelve quarts of milk a day—which was very little for a good cow (so the book said) one could have all the pure milk needed in the home, your floods of rich cream over berries and cereal, and have cream for coffee at breakfast time; make butter, and drink refreshing butter milk on warm summer days, and still have enough milk, cream, butter and buttermilk to sell to the neighbors to pay for the keep of the cow.

“My, I never dreamed that money was so easy to make as all this!” sighed Janet to herself, as she wondered why she had been led into spending her capital for hens and pigs and had never thought seriously of a cow!

She took a sheet of paper from the book and having a stump of a pencil in her pocket, she began figuring.

“We are paying Ames sixteen cents a quart for milk. He sells us four quarts a day for the house, and I have to buy two to four extra for those pigs. I suppose Miss Mason gets about four quarts for her scouts besides. That totals ten to twelve quarts.

“If I keep a cow, I can sell all that milk to the other girls and give my pigs skim-milk, ’cause this book says skim-milk is as good for them as pure milk. That’s sixteen times twelve every day.

“This book says I can get about ninety cents a quart for the heavy cream and about sixty for light cream. I don’t know the difference, but I will accept those figures. That’s ninety plus sixty cents more, every day. That makes one ninety-two for milk and one fifty for cream—two dollars and forty cents every day. Then there is my saving of milk for the pigs, and the money made on the butter I might churn once or twice a week. Oh, what a fortune!”

Janet rocked in the chair as she sighed and rolled her eyes skyward as if for inspiration of ways or means to find a cow. Then she turned her attention to the book, once more.

“It says here that a bag of feed will cost about three dollars and a bag lasts about twelve days. That will make three bags a month—about nine dollars for feed. Then the life insurance, accident and illness costs about a dollar a month. But that is a good idea—to insure the cow!” Janet sat approving the insurance plan and then and there determined to heavily insure the life of her cow.

“Well, that’s all it will cost, and just balance that with the income! Phew, it seems almost incredible!” murmured Janet as she studied the figures.

“That money looks almost like profiteering, but it isn’t a bit!” declared Janet to herself. “Even if I sell the milk for fifteen cents a quart to Jimmy and the scouts, I will have a great big balance of profit. I’ll sell it for fifteen because I’ll be using the farm pastures and cow sheds on the place, and I will have to call on the scouts, now and then, to show me how to milk and churn the butter, so I will give them that cent a quart off the retail price.” Janet now began to consider herself a philanthropist.

“Besides the cheap milk the scouts get, I will send them a pot cheese, once in a while, and all the buttermilk they like.” But Janet suddenly thought of the prices charged in the city for fresh buttermilk, so she decided not to be too generous in giving away the buttermilk, but reserve that privilege for a later day.

“Butter is worth sixty-five cents a pound at Four Corners, but I don’t think Tompkins’s butter is as sweet as it might be,” was Janet’s criticism when she pictured the rich golden butter she would turn out of that churn!

“I don’t know how much butter a quart of milk makes, but say I can get ten pounds of butter a week, that makes six dollars and fifty cents for butter. Dear me! Just think of it! All that money and the cow only costs on an average of fifteen dollars a month to keep her in fine condition.”

When Janet got as far as this in her financial calculations, Mrs. James came out on the porch to see what she was so exultant about.

“Can you sit down a moment, Jimmy, and listen to this?” asked Janet, flushed with the thrill of soon being a millionaire.

“Two moments, if you need them,” smiled Mrs. James.

“Well, then, just listen to this. It’s true, too!” and Janet began painting a word-picture in such alluring colors as to cause her hearer to wonder what it all meant.

“No farm is really a farm, you know, Jimmy, until there is a cow on the place. Think of the rural delight of driving a gentle-eyed bovine creature to the pasture early in the morning while the dew is still sparkling upon every blade of verdure. Now feel the warm glow about the heart when you call for the cow at eventide and find her eagerly lowing at the gate of the pasture—eager to follow you home. Then the gratitude she pours out to you by means of pure, frothy milk—pouring into and filling full twelve-quart pails every day as a token of her thanks.”

Janet had to stop a moment for lack of breath, so Mrs. James took advantage of the enforced pause to say: “Is this the preface to a book you are writing, Janet, or are you planning to buy a cow on instalments and need me to endorse the promissory note for you?”

“Oh, Jimmy, please don’t interrupt my thought until I am quite through!” exclaimed Janet, reprovingly.

“I beg your pardon, Janet—I thought your train of thought was broken,” was Mrs. James’s amused reply.

“No, the most important part of the idea is coming: rows of figures! That’s what talks better than I can explain.” Then Janet spread out the sheet of paper upon which she had figured and explained each column of numerals—added, subtracted and multiplied; a few were divided to reach the desired results.

“Now, this column is what it costs to keep a cow, Jimmy. And this next column is what I can make by selling the milk. I based my computation on the minimum of twelve quarts of milk per day, which is really too little for a good cow, you know. Then the third column is what I can get for butter, cream and buttermilk. The skim-milk I shall have to give to the pigs, so I can’t sell that. But just look at the profit I can get out of one cow!” Janet watched Mrs. James’s expression eagerly to see the effect of that astounding fortune so plainly shown in the figures—on paper.

Before committing herself, Mrs. James took the paper and studied it. Then she remarked casually: “You forgot to jot down the initial cost of buying a cow, Janet. How can you count on the cost of fifteen dollars a month if you haven’t secured the cow?”

Janet’s face showed her chagrin. “That’s so! I forgot all about the cost of the cow. But she doesn’t cost very much, does she?”

“I am not sure what they cost today, because everything has advanced so outrageously. But I know that a good cow which is guaranteed to give twelve quarts of milk per day used to sell for a hundred dollars—before the war.”

“O-n-e H-U-N-D-R-E-D Dol-lars!” gasped Janet.

“That was back in 1913. I haven’t the least idea what one costs today.”

“Oh!” was all Janet said as she collapsed in the middle and drooped over in the chair.

“We might buy an old one that gives less milk, for less money,” ventured Mrs. James.

“No,” sighed Janet, hopelessly. “It doesn’t pay to buy old stock! I’m beginning to learn that much. I used old eggs to hatch out and I lost more than a week’s valuable time by it. If I buy an old cow just because she is cheap, I shall have funeral bills to pay, and the insurance costs more on old lives.”

Mrs. James could not restrain a hearty laugh at Janet’s words, although she knew the girl was very serious over the matter.

“I guess I’ll stick to the pigs and chickens this year, and save money so I can buy a cow next year—because that’s where my fortune can be made!” declared Janet, resignedly.

Mrs. James now began to think very seriously so Janet got up and stretched herself before saying: “I think I’ll go to the barn yard and watch my pigs improve.”

She spoke sarcastically, but Mrs. James said: “I just had an idea. Will you leave that paper with me for a time? I want to look it over.”

“Certainly! Keep it forever. I will not need it again—My! one cow, more than one hundred dollars!” With this muttered expression of disgust, Janet walked away. She was passing the kitchen door when Rachel came out.

“Janet, I’se got to have one ob dem aigs back agin. I has to use one moh in my cake. Kin you git it foh me?”

“Yes, but you warned me about touching the eggs once they were under the hen. And you said it was not good to annoy the hen once she sat contentedly upon the eggs.”

“Yeh, I knows. Anyway, run to the hen house and see if mebbe dey ain’t jus’ one egg in dem nestes,” urged Rachel, anxiously.

“Maybe one of those lazy, good-for-nothing hens changed her mind by this time, Rachel, but I doubt it very much,” laughed Janet.

Rachel stood watching her go down the lane, and she smiled broadly as she returned to the kitchen to bake the cake. Janet went over to one of the newly filled straw nests without any hope of finding anything there. But the moment she spied two smooth eggs beside the china egg in the nest, she gave such a war whoop of joy that every chicken in the runway started calling and the cock began crowing with fear.

She was about to race from the hen house when she remembered to look in the remaining nests. To her added delight and astonishment she found four more eggs.

“Well, well! This isn’t as bad as I thought it was. I suppose the hens are becoming accustomed to the change from Ames’s farm to Green Hill, and they like it better now,” soliloquized Janet as she skipped joyously along the walk.

“Rachel! Oh, Rachel! I got six eggs—all fresh and clean!” cried Janet when she came near enough to the house to be heard by the cook.

Rachel ran out upon the stoop to express her amazement, and Janet said: “How much are six strictly fresh eggs, Rachel. I am not going to charge Jimmy as much as Ames does.”

Rachel looked stunned. She had not thought of being charged for the eggs when she took them out of the box and placed them in the nests, yet she knew it would be dishonest to expect Mrs. James to pay for them out of Natalie’s money.

“Mis’ James knows what dey is wuth,” was all she said, as she took the eggs and put them back in the basket whence they had been so recently taken.

Janet had hurried to the porch and now led Mrs. James out to the kitchen to show her the wonderful eggs.

When they went back to the side porch, Mrs. James said: “Janet, this is the idea I had when you spoke about the cow. If you cannot afford to buy one for yourself, why not form a company and every one at Green Hill own a share in the cow. It will be easier for you as a cow makes lots of work that you do not dream of, and with seven of us to do the work neither will be overtaxed. We would all take turns. One would drive the cow to pasture in the morning, another bring her home at night. One must keep the pails and pans clean, another look after the feed. Still another will milk and another churn butter. Every week we will change about so that each one gets an opportunity to learn how to do all the work.”

“But who will get the profit? and who will buy the cow?” wondered Janet, the idea not altogether displeasing as long as she felt she could not own the cow herself.

“If seven of us pay, it is only seven times into one hundred. I think we all can manage to pay that much for the returns we shall get. And I thought of asking Mr. Marvin to advance us the cash now and let us pay him back in weekly payments.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea! I think he will do it, too.”

“We can sell to the house and the Camp the products we need that we now are buying from Ames and Four Corners’ store, and that money will go into our fund. Then, when butter is made, you can buy the skim-milk for your pigs at a small price. What do you say?”

“I say it is great! Let’s go and tell the other girls!” cried Janet, eagerly.

As Mrs. James led the way over to Norma’s flower beds where that worker was digging and planting without stopping to mop her perspiring brow, Janet thought to herself “This old world isn’t such a bad place to live in, after all!”

What a difference a few eggs and a plan for a cow made in her sense of things. Yet everything was really unchanged, in fact. For the old hens were no different than they were when Janet purchased them from Ames, and the fun and fortune to be had from the cow was but the vision created by a few cheerful words from a sympathetic friend. Still, if we must dream at all, let us have happy dreams instead of nightmares.

The proposition of syndicating a cow was met with hilarity at first, from every girl spoken to; but they found cause to consider the matter as an interesting one.

“We’ve got a ready-made farm and acres of free grass, so why not keep a cow?” said Natalie.

“If we expect to be real farmers, we have to have a cow,” was Norma’s comment.

“And think of the money saved on milk and other things that a cow makes,” was Frances’ reply.

“The butter is churned!” corrected Janet, with superior wisdom for had she not read that book on stock-raising. “The cow merely gives the milk, she doesn’t make anything else.”

“Well, then, who does make the milk if she merely gives it,” retorted Frances, thereby creating a laugh at Janet’s expense.

“When you think of all the money we can make and still have cream and butter for our own use, it seems too good to be true,” said Belle.

“Can’t we get one tomorrow, Jimmy?” asked Natalie.

“I suppose it is too late to look about for one to-day, eh?” asked Janet.

“We’ll plan to drive through the country tomorrow morning and hunt about for a likely beast,” replied Mrs. James.

“I don’t suppose Farmer Ames has a cow for sale, has he?” asked Janet. “If we got it of him we’d be able to charge it.”

“Why, Jan! You surely wouldn’t buy anything else of him, would you? Just look at those useless hens and rooster! They never laid an egg since you’ve had ’em!” exclaimed Natalie.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, girls. The chickens laid six fine eggs today, so Ames’s couldn’t help it if they took a week to finish the eggs,” said Janet.

“That’s something like it, Jan! Now we can have fresh eggs for breakfast every morning,” said Belle.

“Anyway, I’d rather pay cash for the cow than feel as if we had to buy everything from Ames!” was Natalie’s comment.

They had been standing near the field fence of Natalie’s garden as they planned. Now they saw the girl scouts from Solomon’s Seal Camp coming up the hill toward the house. They watched them as Janet said: “Let Jimmy tell them the surprise.”

As soon as Miss Mason and her scouts joined the other group, therefore, Mrs. James told them about the Cow Company. At first they laughed even as the girls before them had done, but the suggestion was acceptable from many points of view, and Miss Mason said: “I wish we could own shares in the cow.”

Mrs. James looked from one to the other of her girls and finding they approved of the idea just expressed, she said: “We might sell each one of you one share in our cow—when we get her!”

“Oh, I have it! Listen to this: Let’s form a real stock company incorporated on the cow for the asset. We’ll divide it into shares of so much a share. No stockholder can own more than one share, then we won’t feel jealous of each other. We will pay all costs out of the capital paid in for stock and we will pay all dividends twice a month, from the money we take in from camp and from the house and from Janet’s pigs. Now, how is that?” Natalie’s exultant face showed what she thought of her plan.

The others laughed at the very idea of incorporating a cow, and Mrs. James remarked humorously: “Natalie inherits the gift of high finance.”

It was the first time any one had referred to her father in the girl’s presence, and this mention of Mr. Averill’s business ability proved that Natalie had quite overcome her morbid sorrow that she had entertained in the city. Now she laughed gayly and said: “If I take after Daddy I’ll be a great financial magnate soon!”

“Oh, please don’t get switched from our cow, girls!” said Janet, anxiously.

“I’ve heard it said that cows have a dreadful habit of switching their tails in your face while you milk them,” said Belle.

“Cows have lots of tricks that you never learn until they are practiced upon you,” laughed Miss Mason.

“Some cows horn you,” ventured Norma, fearfully.

This caused a laugh, and again Janet begged: “Come, let’s get back to the business. Do we syndicate this cow or only have partners?”

“We might take a ballot on the question before the Chair,” laughed Mrs. James.

“No, it is either ‘aye’ or ‘nay’—from every one,” said Natalie, and the “ayes” had it unanimously.

“All right, then. We’ll proceed to the house and I’ll draw up an agreement such as I have often seen Daddy do. Then we’ll have one of the scout artists make us each a share of stock with a cow’s head at the top for our emblem. How much shall we charge for each share of stock?” As Natalie finished speaking she glanced around at the circle of smiling faces.

“Better find out first how much the cow will cost. We may not have enough money in the treasury to pay for her, if we collect payments now for the stock and do not collect enough,” was Janet’s sensible suggestion.

“When Natalie finishes that arduous task of drawing up a corporation agreement, I will read you something from the book ‘Scouting for Girls’ which you may not have read very carefully,” remarked Miss Mason.

Mrs. James went for the book and when it was handed the Captain of Solomon’s Seal Camp, she opened the book at page 507, and read:

Dairy Maid. Symbol—Milking Stool.

1. Take entire care of a cow and the milk of one cow for one month, keeping record of quantity of each milking.

2. Make butter at four different times, and submit statement of amount made and of the process followed in making.

3. Make pot cheese; give method.

4. Name four different breeds of cows. How can they be distinguished. Which breed gives the most milk? Which breed gives the richest milk?

5. What are the rules for feeding, watering and pasturing cows? What feed is best for cows? What care should be given cows to keep them in perfect condition? What diseases must be guarded against? Why is it so imperative to have a cow barn, all implements, workers and cows scrupulously clean?

6. Of what is milk composed? How is cream separated from milk? Name two processes and explain each. How and why should milk be strained and cooled before being bottled or canned?”

As Miss Mason concluded reading the article, the girls looked at each other, and one of them said: “Who can answer those questions?”

Then it developed that three of the girl scouts of Solomon’s Seal could not only reply correctly to the questions, but could give more valuable information than was expected of them. Miss Mason knew they had been born and reared on farms, but the girls under Mrs. James’s care were not aware of it.

“That simplifies our troubles with the cow, right off,” declared Janet. “We’ll ask the three wise ones to show us how to do things right.”

“And Rachel and I will umpire the contests of milking and churning,” added Mrs. James.

“Now that we have decided to form a corporation do you not think the three village scouts should be invited to take a share in the cow, if they so desire?” suggested Miss Mason.

“Oh, of course! We forgot all about them,” said Natalie.

“We’ll invite them to join us when Frances drives to Four Corners this afternoon,” added Janet.

“Those girls can milk a cow like anything! And they all can churn butter, too,” announced Norma.

“If we keep on adding members to our stock company the poor cow will be divided into minutest pieces to enable each stock owner to hold a share,” remarked Mrs. James laughingly.

“Well, the more shares we have to make of the cow the less each one will cost us,” said Natalie.

“And the less our dividends will be, too,” added Janet

“Whether we get dividends or not, we will have our milk, butter and cream, right at hand all the time. And if we want to sell the cow in the Fall we can get our money back again,” said Miss Mason.

“If we haven’t killed her before then,” was Belle’s pessimistic reply.

“If we kill her we can collect insurance, you know,” and this remark from Janet caused a general laugh.

After many other interesting details were discussed and decided upon, it was planned that the hunt for the cow would begin the following morning. Miss Mason was delegated to act for the Camp girls as the automobile would not hold all of the scouts. Miss Mason accepted the responsibility with a speech, and then the two groups parted. The scouts went back to camp and the farm girls went to look after their individual tasks.

CHAPTER VIII

AN ANIMAL HUNT

But the proposed hunt for the cow did not take place the following day as Mrs. James had said it would, because a postcard arrived on the late mail announcing the appearance of Sam, Rachel’s nephew, on the first train from the city which would stop at Four Corners.

Rachel was overjoyed at the news, and Mrs. James thought it best to send the automobile to meet Sam in case he had not been given specific directions of how to find the farm. This plan would interfere with the scouts driving about the country in search for their cow.

When Frances started for the station in the morning, the other girls accompanied her, as they purposed a visit to Nancy Sherman and Hester Tompkins to interest them in the corporation. They became so interested in this absorbing topic that the incoming train was forgotten. When it was remembered and the girls hastened to reach the station, they found the train had been in and gone again, some time before they got there.

“We’ll overtake him on the road to Green Hill anyway,” remarked Frances, as she started the automobile back along the road to the farm.

They did not waste time to stop at the store that time and thus they missed Sam who did stop there to ask the way. But they drove on until they reached the house. Mrs. James was over at the Camp and Rachel was leaning over the gate waiting for her nephew when the girls drove up and learned that Sam had not yet appeared on the scene.

“Shall we go back and hunt for him?” asked Natalie.

“Dear me, it’s so much time lost when we want to drive to Dorothy Ames’s and see if she will join our corporation,” said Janet, impatiently.

“You’se go right on, Chillun, ’cause I likes to have Sam to myself, foh a bit, after he comes,” announced Rachel when she saw the girls wanted to be off on their own affairs.

Without being urged, the girls drove away and secured Dorothy’s consent to share the cow with the other scouts. It was while driving to Dorothy’s that the girls picked up the dog, Grit, the account of which is fully told in the first book, “Natalie: A Garden Scout.”

That afternoon, when Mrs. James invited Sam to go with them the next day and help in selecting the cow, Sam laughed.

“I ain’t never seen a cow closer’n fifty feet, Miss James—dat is, in drivin’ past a lot where cows eat, or going by a farm while travelin’ in a train or trolley. So I don’t know a hefer from an old cow,” he explained.

“Then we have to take chances,” was Mrs. James’ reply.

When the party was crowded into the automobile and ready to start on the momentous search, Sam stood waiting to see them off, and was ready with advice: “Don’t let Wes’chester farmers play you a trick. I’ve heard say you can tell a cow’s age by her horns but maybe that was a vaudevilly joke.”

The car sped through country by-ways, and woodland roads; they passed farms and pastures galore, stopping wherever a herd of cows were grazing, or when they found one wandering along the roadside. But Mrs. James generally shook her head and signalled Frances to go on.

After several of these stops, all of which brought forth no results, Janet asked impatiently: “What was the matter with those last cows, Jimmy?”

“I am looking for a good Alderney, or a cross with a Guernsey, because they are the best milkers and need the least care.”

“Why, Jimmy! Can you tell the difference between one cow and another?” exclaimed Natalie, astonished at her chaperone’s hitherto hidden knowledge.

“I had both kinds on the farm when I was first married, and I can tell a good cow when I see one.”

Mrs. James went up several degrees in the girls’ estimation after that, but when Miss Mason called out, they forgot their interest in what Mrs. James was saying.

“We just flew past a board sign that advertised a cow and calf for sale! Let’s turn back and inquire of the farmer,” was Miss Mason’s advice.

So they backed down the road for several hundred feet and read the sign. It was nailed to the fence post in front of the house and stated just as Miss Mason had said.

“Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could buy a little calf and keep it until next year! A calf ought to be cheap and it will grow into a cow by next year, so it would be a bargain for me,” exclaimed Janet, eagerly.

But the others in the car were too engrossed in the immediate purchase of the cow to pay any attention to Janet’s hopes for raising a cow for the following year. Frances deftly turned the car into the lane that ran to the barn where the farmer stood watching them drive up.

Mrs. James returned his salute of “How-dy?” and then said: “We came to see about the cow you have advertised for sale.”

“Are you lookin’ fer someone else, er for yourself, Lady?” queried the man.

“What difference would that make?” countered Mrs. James.

“Wall, sometimes, folks just ask prices and then go tell their real buyers who come along and offer half the price.”

“Oh, do you have two prices, then?” asked Miss Mason.

“Not when you buy for yourself. When you shop fer friends I ask more,” was the man’s reply.

The girls thought this was very funny so they laughed, but the elder women frowned with disapproval. Still they waited to hear the price of the cow.

“Ef you are interested, just step this way and I will show you the critter. She’s out at pastoor, just now,” said the man.

They all got out of the car and followed the farmer down a narrow lane that ran to the lot at the further end of the farm. As they went, Mrs. James warned them wisely: “I think we have a Shylock to deal with, girls, so don’t you dare show any admiration or interest in his cows, or he will ask double the price. Leave the whole matter to me and I will bargain with him if we want the animal.”

“Jimmy, I fear you are a Shylock yourself since we came to take up farm life,” laughed Natalie.

“In this case it’s ‘when in Rome do as the Romans do,’” was the retort.

The farmer now reached the rail fence that enclosed the pasture, and lowered the bars to permit his visitors to pass within. As he walked beside Mrs. James, he pointed out a cow standing in one corner of the lot. “That’s the one for sale. She’s the best milker and the gentlest creature I’ve got. I’m real sorry to part with her.”

“Why do you do it, then?” asked Janet, bluntly.

“’Cause I got too many to care for and folks don’t want to buy a poor milker, you know. They wants to get one of your best, so I decided to give her up if she brought the price.”

“What is her price?” asked Miss Mason, but Mrs. James said nothing.

The farmer mentioned an outrageous sum and the ladies merely looked at him. Then Mrs. James said: “I only wanted to buy one cow—not pay you for the herd.”

She turned to go back up the lane, followed by the girls and Miss Mason. The latter was smiling at her companion’s remark.

“You don’t know what you’re turning down, Ma’am, when you think that price too high,” argued the farmer.

“I know that that is an old cow of a common breed. I want a cow of not more than four years of age, a cross between an Alderney and a Guernsey—or perhaps a strain of Jersey in her. And I won’t pay more than half the price you ask for that beef,” was Mrs. James’ retort.

“Wouldn’t you care to look at any of the others as long as you are here?” anxiously asked the man, seeing his customer was going away.

“No, I didn’t see a single cow in that lot that I’d pay to feed.”

“You said you had a calf for sale, but I did not see any,” was Janet’s comment at this point.

“I don’t keep the calf in the lot with the big cows. Do you want to see her?”

“What are you asking for the calf?” was Mrs. James’ reply. He mentioned a price, and the girls nudged Mrs. James to have a look at it.

The farmer led them to a small pen separated from the barns but near enough to be convenient for him. When they reached the fence they saw a little woolly calf, fat and cute as could be.

“Oh, how darling!” cried Janet, instantly in love with it.

“Isn’t it too sweet for anything!” added Natalie, clasping her hands in admiration.

“How I’d love to pat its woolly head,” said Norma.

Mrs. James had Belle and Frances on either side of her, so she managed to pinch them to keep them from expressing their sentiments so plainly. But they, too, thought the calf very fascinating. The appointed judge of the group then tried to impress the farmer with her knowledge of calves.

“He has very thin legs, I see.”

“Why, did you ever see a calf of her age with bigger legs. That’s a she, you know. In another month’s time you wouldn’t know that calf, she’d be so strong and husky.”

Mrs. James felt silenced at being trapped by the wrong use of a pronoun, so she changed the current of her criticisms. “How much does she cost you for keep on an average per day?”

The farmer mentioned a ridiculously low figure that Mrs. James derided, but she asked for the very lowest price of the calf. Perhaps she would not have done this had not Janet so persistently poked her in the back.

The girls thought the price very cheap, indeed, and their faces plainly said so. But Mrs. James shook her head. “You are asking a price for a six month’s old calf. This young thing is not worth more than half your price.”

After much bargaining, the farmer came down one-third of his first asking price, and Janet frowned severely at Mrs. James to let her know she was to take the little creature.

“Well, I’ll take her if you agree to deliver her,” said she, finally. All faces lighted up and smiled once more.

“How fer do you live from here?” asked the farmer.

“About ten to twelve miles—over at Green Hill Farm.”

“Hoh, that’s too far for me to go for nothing. Make it an extra three dollars and I’ll deliver Susy.”

“Not another cent above the price agreed for the calf. I know it is too late in the season for you to dispose of Susy in a hurry, and we are not over-anxious to buy a calf and then have all the trouble of getting her home. We really wanted a cow, you know.”

“Well, seeing how bad these girls want the calf, I’ll see if I can get her over to your place for a dollar!”

Mrs. James started for the roadway without saying a word in return to the farmer’s inuendoes, and the girls feared lest the calf be lost to them. But they had never traded with farmers before, so they were not versed in the various customs of trade.

The farmer followed them to the car but just as Mrs. James was stepping in, he said: “When do you want the calf delivered at Green Hill?”

“Tomorrow or next day,” was the reply, as if there had been no question of the man’s delivering the calf.

“If Saturday would do I would prefer it, as I drive to White Plains every Saturday, and can drop the calf on my way there.”

“All right, Saturday will do for us, too. Remember the price you quoted to me—I have several witnesses who heard what you said.”

“But I didn’t say this sale was C. O. D.!” cried the farmer. “I thought you wanted it to be a cash sale.”

“I didn’t expect to buy a calf when I started out today, but I need a cow, and I have to keep my money for that. If I get the cow cheaper than I am ready to pay, I will stop here on my way home and leave a deposit for the calf,” explained Mrs. James.

“Can’t you pay ten or five dollars down now?” asked the farmer anxiously.

“I’ll do exactly as I said—stop here on my way back, even if it takes me miles out of the way. I’ll either leave some money then, or you will be at liberty to sell the calf to some one else.”

Mrs. James told Frances to drive on, and the man was left watching them go down the road. Janet seemed to think the calf was lost to them, because no money had been paid on it.

They passed several other farms before they turned to a country road that was said to be a shortcut to Peekskill. They had not traveled this road more than two miles before they passed a wretched little house with a few acres of untilled soil about it. On the corner of the house was a sign that read: “Fine cow for sale cheap.”

“That’s the breed we are looking for,” laughed Miss Mason.

“Girls, for goodness sake don’t nudge me into pieces if you like the looks of this cow!” commanded Mrs. James, as she got down out of the car.

The girls trailed after Mrs. James as she went to the side door where a lad sat digging in the dirt. She stopped and said: “Where is your father, little boy?”

“I dunno! Nobody knows.”

This was a poser and the girls giggled, but Mrs. James changed her form of question: “Can I see your mother?”

“Ain’t got no mudder. Ain’t got nobuddy but Jipson.”

This unexpected reply brought a chorus of laughter from the girls, and a smile from Mrs. James. Before she could ask another form of question, however, a towseled head was thrust from a dormer-window and a woman called down: “Who’sat, Bobby?”

The boy looked up and said phlegmatically: “Dunno.”

“What they want?” continued the woman.

“Want my fodder, den she wants my mudder.”

The head was withdrawn and soon afterward its owner came out upon the steps and greeted the strangers. Then she said: “Bobby’s mother died at the alms house, you know, but we don’t know where his father ran to a year ago.”

Mrs. James said politely: “We’re sorry for Bobby but we came to ask about the cow you have for sale.”

“Oh, yeh! That’s it, is it. Well come this way and I’ll show her to you. She ain’t so big a looker but she milks dandy! I get ten quarts every day and twelve just after she calves. I just sold her calf and she’s givin’ me thirteen quarts this week.”

“That sounds very remarkable, but we want a cow that will give an abundance of good milk,” said Miss Mason.

“Is the milk rich with cream?” questioned Mrs. James, after nudging the teacher even as the girls had nudged her at the other farm.

“Yeh, I can churn the finest butter! I’ll give you a taste when we go back to the house.” They reached the cow shed where the animal was kept, and there they saw a small cow in the filthy yard back of the shed.

“Here Sue! Come Sue, Sue, Sue!” coaxed the woman, holding down her hand as though she held some dainty morsel in the palm.

The cow turned and came over to the fence where she could be examined. While the woman scratched the top of the cow’s head she explained why she wished to sell Sue. “That boy back there ain’t got no family, but his granddaddy lives on a good farm up Bedford Hills way. I got a letter from him t’other day offering me half shares on working the farm if I brung the boy and kept house for them both. He is an old lame man and the farm is good, so I took the job. This farm ain’t wuth shucks for a living.”

“And that is why you want to sell the cow, Miss Jipson?” asked Miss Mason.

“Yeh. She just had a calf, but I sold it to a man down on the main road yesterday.”

“Is the man’s name Folsom?” asked Mrs. James.

“Yeh—Ed Folsom. He makes money on buyin’ up cows and calves and sellin’ them again. But he wouldn’t pay a decent price for Sue so I wouldn’t let him take her. But he wants her bad.”

“I am inclined to think we just bought Sue’s calf. He said the name was Susy. Perhaps you named her after the mother,” remarked Mrs. James.

“Yeh, that’s right! Her name is Susy. And you say you bought her? Ain’t that queer that you come and want Sue, too.” Then as an afterthought flashed into her mind, she asked: “What did Ed Folsom ask you for Susy?”

Mrs. James told her the price and instantly Miss Jipson flared up angrily.

“Why the old skinflint! He wouldn’t pay me but half that price, and he promised faithful that he’d keep Susy for his own use and never sell her to some one who might butcher her!”

“We will take better care of her than he would, Miss Jipson, but he had no right to break his word to you,” said Mrs. James.

“I’d rather you did have her, ’cause Susy is a good little calf, but it makes me mad to think of all you had to pay for her. Now what about the cow?”

“Well, to be truthful, Miss Jipson, I wanted an Alderney or Guernsey, and this cow looks too small to be either, or a cross of either one.”

“No, she ain’t. She’s just plain cow but the best kind I ever saw. Bobby’s father raised her from a calf, and her mother was just such a good milker, too. You’ll find Susy will grow into as fine a cow, too.”

“What price are you asking for Sue?” now asked Mrs. James.

“Sue is like one of my own fam’ly and I would rather sell her to you for a good home, than to Folsom with his lies. If you got Susy, you oughta have Sue, too. So I will sell her for one hundred dollars.”

“When can you milk her for us?” was Mrs. James’ next question.

“Right now, if you like. I milked her early this morning, so she won’t give half as much milk as she will by night time, but you can see how gentle she is and how easy to milk.”

Then Sue was brought out and milked to every one’s satisfaction. When they were back at the house again, Miss Jipson said: “If you could call some early morning or late evening you could see the amount she milks.”

“We’ll take your word for it, Miss Jipson. But how can we get her over to our farm?” said Mrs. James.

“Ain’t Folsom going to carry the calf over for you?” asked the woman.

“True! We’ll make him bring the cow for nothing because he took advantage of you,” declared Miss Mason, eagerly.

“That we will!” was Mrs. James’ approval. Then she added as she remembered: “Can you take Sue to his farm before Saturday morning?”

“Sure! And he can collect the pay for me after you try the cow and are satisfied that what I said is so.”

“No, my good woman, we will pay you now for the cow, and you can give us a receipt and state that the cow will be sent to Folsom’s farm for delivery to us at Green Hill Farm. I’ll see to the rest, never worry.”

“Now that’s what I calls right good of you—all. If I only hadn’t sold Susy to Folsom I’d like to have sold her to you folks.”

“You can cheer yourself with the knowledge that we have Susy as well as her mother, and both will have good kind treatment,” was Mrs. James’ reply.

Then the money was paid down and a receipt taken from Miss Jipson who puzzled quite a little over the strange name of “Solomon’s Seal Troop.”

Having purchased the object of their morning’s tour, the amateur farmers drove back along the road they had come. When they came to Folsom’s farm again, Mrs. James had Frances stop the car. She sent Janet to the house to ask the farmer to step out to the automobile. While Janet was absent, Mrs. James asked Miss Mason for her fountain pen and a scrap of paper.

The teacher always carried a small pen and a pad in her hand-bag, so she gave it to Mrs. James and watched while the latter wrote a short agreement to be signed by Folsom. Then Janet came back, followed by the farmer.

Mrs. James saw the delighted smile on the man’s face and wondered at it. His first words showed his mistake, however.

“I see you’ve come back to buy my cow!”

“Your sight is defective, Mr. Folsom,” retorted Mrs. James.

“Oh,—was it the calf you want to pay for?” he spoke rather disappointedly.

“No, we stopped to tell you that we bought Susy’s mother not half an hour ago, and we know what you paid for the calf not twenty-four hours ago. Had we paid your asking price you would have cleared two hundred per cent on the deal. As it is you made one hundred per cent profit. Rather a good transaction for no cost or labor to you.”

“But you thought you had a good calf for a fair price!”

“I am not gainsaying that, but I am here now to say we do not want Susy, at all, unless you agree to bring the cow at the same time, on Saturday, without charge to Miss Jipson or to us.”

Ed Folsom shook his head and smiled. “Nope! I could have sold that calf after you left for more than you offered, but I am too honest for my own good, so I refused because I knew these gals were crazy for Susy.”

“That’s too bad—that you lost a sale. Because we now have a cow, and that is what we came for today. The calf is a toy. We can get along without the toy unless you want to act fairly in this matter,” said Mrs. James.

“You told us that you had to drive to White Plains on Saturday, so it is not far out of your way,” added Miss Mason.

The farmer see-sawed back and forth on his toes for a few moments as if considering the case, then he said: “Well, if you pay spot cash for Susy I’ll bring the old cow along for two dollars.”

“Sorry to have wasted our time and yours. Good day,” was Mrs. James’ answer. “Drive on, Frances.”

Frances was about to start the engine when Folsom jumped up on the running board: “Hold on, won’t you! I never did see any one in such a hurry to lose a bargain!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Mrs. James guilelessly.

“About that calf—do you want her or don’t you?”

“How useless to ask? If we had not wanted her would we have told you to deliver her on Saturday?”

“Well, then, I’ll bring the old cow along, but I want pay for the calf now. You might back out of the sale.”

“I can’t pay all cash now, as we paid for the cow. But I will leave a deposit of five dollars and you can collect the balance when you deliver the calf and the cow!” said Mrs. James.

“Ten or nothing!” demanded Folsom.

“All right. Good day. Drive on, Frances.”

“Give me the five and good riddance!” snarled Folsom as angry as he ever had been over a trade.

“Sign this receipt and I’ll hand you the five dollars,” was Mrs. James’ sweet reply, as she took a new five-dollar bill from her purse.

Mr. Folsom read the slip of paper, signed it, then handed it back so Mrs. James offered him the money. The moment he had the bill in his hand, he jumped from the running board and jeered:

“I hope I never meet such a Shylock again. We folks would have to go out of business if many women were as close as you!”

Mrs. James leaned out of the car and sweetly replied: “That is the greatest compliment ever paid me. I am considered to be such a soft-hearted being that my friends always have to warn me of being duped. Now I can hold up my head with the best of you traders.”

The girls laughed merrily as they started the car on its homeward journey, and Janet said: “Funny how we called Folsom a Shylock, and then he returned the compliment.”

CHAPTER IX

TELLS OF BEES AND BUGS

They had not gone more than half the distance to Green Hill Farm before Belle called their attention to a man who was hiving a swarm of honeybees.

“I wonder if bees are hard to keep?” said Belle.

“Not very, and they are the most interesting of all domestic farm-life,” returned Miss Mason.

“How do you know that?” asked Janet, eagerly.

“We watched a bee-farmer in the country, one summer, and the stories he told of his bees, and the intelligence they manifested, won my admiration of them. I’ve always wanted to try a few hives and see if I could make friends with them and raise a bee family.”

“There is something in the scout book about bees,” reminded Natalie.

“Yes, you can win a badge by passing the test. But it is not that, so much, as the fact that you have a fine farm and plenty of room for bees. It is a shame not to have them,” said Miss Mason.

When the car drove in at the side-gate, the girls found the scouts from Solomon’s Seal Camp waiting on the porch for news of the adventure. With them sat Dorothy Ames, Nancy Sherman, and Hester Tompkins. Their interest in the day’s trip proved their interest in the corporation with one cow for an asset.

There was wild rejoicing when it was learned that a fine little cow with the name of Sue, was purchased and would come to Green Hill on Saturday to live. Then they heard about the little calf which Janet claimed for herself. Planning for the comfort of the cow and calf continued until Rachel came out to say: “Stead of doing so much talkin’ why don’ you-all go to the barns and ack on your idees. Dat cow-shed what’s there now ain’t fit fer nuttin!”

Laughing at this practical admonition from Rachel, the troop of girls went to the barn to consult with Sam about making a nice new shed for Corporation Sue.

The next morning the girls from the house visited the scouts at the camp to discuss further the idea of keeping bees. Miss Mason got out the handbook and turned to the page where it speaks of bee-keeping. She read aloud:

1. What constitutes a swarm of bees? How do they live? Tell how honey is gathered and stored and honeycomb is built, and what part the queen, drones, workers, play in the life of the colony.

2. Be able to recognize and describe each of the following: queen, drones, workers, eggs, larvae, pupae, honey, bee-food, wax, pollen, propolis, brood-nest, comb, different queen cells.

3. Have a practical knowledge of bee-keeping and assist in hiving a swarm examining a colony, removing the combs, finding the queen, putting foundation in sections, filling in and removing supers, and preparing honey in comb, and strained for market, and present a certificate to this effect.

4. Know which flowers afford the best food for bees and how honey varies according to the flowers in color and flavor.

“Now, girls,” concluded Miss Mason, “I suggest that Janet have first choice to decide whether she wishes to start a bee colony, or whether she waives her right as the stock-farmer scout and prefers to join us in keeping bees.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of bees, Miss Mason. I’ll have so much to do after Susy comes, with all the rest of my live-stock, that taking care of bees will be out of the question,” said Janet.

“Then we can add another asset to our scout corporation and get some bees to start a colony, eh?” ventured Miss Mason.

“Isn’t it rather late in the season to start bees?” asked Natalie.

“Not too late to secure a hive of some one else’s bees. What difference does it make whether the bees are with us or with some one else?” said Janet.

“I don’t know exactly, but I’ve heard that bees hate to be moved about,” returned Natalie.

Then Mrs. James explained: “Bees are very sensitive to environment. And a careful bee-farmer will not move his hives to any strange locality after the inmates are accustomed to certain familiar surroundings. If he has to do any moving he manages to do it in winter, or when the bees swarm.”

“I’ve seen a colony of bees disintegrate and leave home to become tramp-bees, or join other colonies—although the latter act is not common or popular with bees. They are very conservative and seldom associate with bees of other colonies,” added Miss Mason.

“Then how would it be possible for us to get the bees?” asked Norma.

“We would have to secure a swarm which has not yet been accustomed to an environment, but one which will accept a new home without wandering away looking for the old hive,” said Mrs. James.

“Yes, that is what I was going to suggest—that we find a new swarm, nearby, and bring it to the farm to live,” added Miss Mason.

“Mrs. Tompkins has bees and they just love her flower-garden,” said Norma.

“Maybe Mrs. Tompkins can tell us if she expects a new swarm very shortly. Or she may know of a farmer who has just hived a swarm,” suggested Natalie, eagerly.

“I say, let’s decide where we will stand the bee-hives when we get them,” said Janet, practically.

“We can walk over to the gardens and look for a sunny sheltered spot,” ventured Miss Mason.

“And we can authorize Frances to find out from Mrs. Tompkins whether she has any swarms, or knows of one that can be purchased by us,” added Belle.

So they all started for the gardens to decide upon a suitable place to keep the bee-hives should they be able to buy any. It did not take long to choose the spot along the fence that divided the garden from the pasture lot. There was a row of fruit trees in a line alongside this fence, and they would not only offer the shade from a burning sun in summer, but also provide nectar and pollen in the spring when the blossoms were blowing, and they also afforded resting-places for home-coming laden bees, or for swarms which might wish to locate near the hive.

Being so near the vegetable gardens, Miss Mason suggested that Natalie show them how her gardens were doing. Always glad to display her knowledge and experience in gardening, Natalie led the way.

The first bed they reached held the lettuce plants discarded by Mr. Ames and left for Natalie to transplant. They had flourished in spite of the interference from Janet’s chickens, and now they looked very green and tempting.

“The lettuce is large enough to pull whenever Jimmy says we need any at the house,” remarked Natalie, proudly.

“Oh, hardly! I should say it would need another week’s growth, Natalie, before being worth pulling,” said Mrs. James.

“We—ll, maybe it will take until Sunday, but surely it will be ready then,” was Natalie’s reluctant admission.

The girls praised the lima beans, and the dwarf beans, and the beets, and all the other growing greens, but truth to tell they knew not one vegetable from another until Natalie or Mrs. James pointed them out by name.

Then they came to the potato hills. The curly-topped little plants looked very pretty in their dark green ruffled leaves. Natalie was delighted with them and began describing how the seed of a potato was obtained. In following Natalie’s motions at the hills, Mrs. James saw something on one of the leaves of the plant just beside her. She stooped and plucked off the bug.

“Here’s a potato bug, Natalie. You’ll have to protect your vines from the beetle that is so destructive.”

At that, Natalie stooped too, and examined several leaves, and the rest of the scouts looked eagerly for the beetles. They found many of the pests on the under side of the leaves, busily at work feeding on the tender greens.

“The horrid little things! What can I do to them?” cried Natalie, horrified at seeing so many bugs.

“You must kill them or they’ll eat all the leaves which are the only sources of light and fresh air provided for the tiny tubers already forming under the surface of the ground. These Colorado beetles lay eggs on the underside of the leaves and these soon hatch out additional bugs so that very soon the entire field is infested with them. The time to get rid of them is when the potato plants are still very small, as these are,” explained Mrs. James.

“Dear me, Jimmy, I can’t bear to touch them, so how can I ever kill them all?” Natalie shuddered as she spoke.

“We’ll have to order some Paris Green from Four Corners and prepare a solution to cover the leaves. It can be applied with a squirt-gun, and it is quite simple to do.”

“I’ll go with Frances at once, and bring back the stuff,” was Natalie’s emphatic declaration.

The girls then left the gardens and Frances went to get out the car to drive to Four Corners. Meantime, Janet went to the barn yard with a few of the girls, to have a look at the fowl and pigs. While she was there, Janet took a peep in the nests and found two more eggs.

“Isn’t this great! The hens are laying splendidly now, and I am keeping the house provided with fresh eggs every day,” said she, exultantly.

Then they went to the house, Janet carrying a precious egg in each hand. As she came up to the back stoop she saw Rachel in the kitchen and called to her.

“Look, Rachel! Two more eggs. Isn’t that fine?”

Rachel came out on the stoop and smiled: “It shore am, honey. Putty soon you’ll have two dozen to your credit on my books.”

“Well, I guess I’m ’most through with my trials and tribulations now, but poor Nat’s have begun again,” remarked Janet.

“Oh, shucks! All pertatters has bugs. Dat’s no trouble atall. Nat’lie’ll learn some day dat gardenin’ ain’t all fun,” laughed Rachel, as she took the two eggs.

“Natalie’s going to powder them with Paris Green. Is it good for bugs, Rachel?” asked Norma.

“Yeh, best pizen I know of but I done tol Natalie dat it ain’t no good to use at evenin’ or late afternoon. It’s got to be squirted over the leaves when dey is fresh and dewy. Den the powder cakes on and smudders all the eggs and hatchin’ bugs. And it keeps the big fellers f’om flyin’ and gettin’ any more to eat. Dey jus’ has to die.”

Sam come up to the stoop at this moment and added his wisdom to that already expressed by his aunt. “I usta fix up tomater cans last summer on a farm, and we filled ’em half full of kerosene. Den wid little sticks to knock the bugs offen the plants we got dem inside the cans. The ile did the rest for us.”

“Sam, that’s a good idea! If you could fix up some cans for us now, we’d go to work and help drown the bugs,” said Janet.

“It won’t take a minute to rig up the cans,” said Sam.

So he went to the dump-heap back of the woodshed and picked out a number of old cans. He nailed them to long flat sticks and then brought them back to the house to give to the girls who had offered their services to save Natalie’s potatoes.

They had equipped themselves with sticks to use as removers of the beetles, and when they were ready to start for the garden, Janet said: “But where is the kerosene oil, Sam?”

Sam looked up at his aunt and said: “Where is the ile?”

“I ain’t got no ile, son. I doesn’t use ile for ennyt’ng nohow. You’se will have to get some at Fo’h Cornehs.”

But that would take as long to get back to the house as the powder was taking, so the girls placed their novel beetle removers under the steps of the stoop to use at some future time.

It was almost supper time when Natalie returned with the Paris Green and instructions from Mr. Tompkins of how to use it. She also had procured a sprayer to use when the Paris Green was prepared for use.

Before retiring that night Natalie warned Rachel that she was not to allow her to oversleep in the morning. “I want to get up at dawn, Rachie, because the bugs will eat more poison in the early morning than later in the day. And I must clean off my darling little potato vines, you see.”

“Yeh, I see, honey I’ll git up and he’p you some,” promised Rachel as she went upstairs.

Janet was telling about the eggs her hens were now laying, so Rachel chuckled to herself as she left Natalie. When the latter went back to join her friends, Mrs. James was explaining why hens seldom laid as many eggs in rainy weather. She said it was accounted for by some scientists because the earth was damp and the hens could not scratch readily in it.

“That’s why I scattered broken clam-shells in the yard to make the scratching better,” said Janet.

They laughed at this remark, and Mrs. James led the way upstairs to bed. The following morning Natalie was called an hour before breakfast. She hurriedly donned her garden overalls and ran down to the cellar for the Paris Green. Unfortunately, Rachel found her bread dough risen and running over the sides of the pan, so that she had to knead it into the pans before doing anything else.

By the time Natalie had the Paris Green mixed and ready to apply to the vines, Janet and Norma came downstairs to help her. They carried the bucket of poison to the garden and Natalie filled the gun. Then, while one of the girls turned the leaves over, Natalie squirted them thickly with the preparation. The other girl carried the pail of poison as they went from plant to plant.

“This isn’t such hard work, is it?” commented Natalie.

“No, not hard but not very exciting, either,” laughed Norma, who sneezed every time any of the mixture reached her nose.

“We ought to finish the whole potato section before Rach calls us to breakfast,” added Janet.

And so they did. When the work was completed and they stood looking over the hills where tiny green leaves had so recently shown, they now saw the crinkly-edged vines looking like dull blanketed things, they were so heavily laden with Paris Green.

Natalie turned about, gazing at the other vegetables, and Janet laughingly remarked: “Are you looking for ‘more world’s to conquer?’”

“I’m looking at those corn hills where some of the bugs alighted when they got away from us,” said she.

“Well, do you want to dose them, too?” asked Norma.

“We may as well. Then they won’t go on raising families,” replied Natalie. So Paris Green was liberally shot all over the plants wherever a bug was found. Then the girls went back to the house.

“We’ve still got a little poison left, Nat,” said Janet.

“Oh, I think I’ll use it my heliotrope and early asters. I noticed yesterday that they were covered with lice,” remarked Norma.

“All right. You show me where to shoot and we’ll cover the pests with the poison,” offered Natalie.

So Norma held the plants steady while Paris Green was literally piled on top of the crowns and over all the leaves. Then the preparation gave out and the girls had to desist from further work.

Directly after breakfast, Janet was seen coming from the barn yard and with an egg in each hand. She seemed perplexed and when she reached the kitchen stoop she saw the girls watching her.

“This is the queerest thing, yet,” said she.

“What is?” asked several of the girls.

“Why, just before going in to breakfast I ran over to the chicken-coop to see if the hens had laid any eggs and there wasn’t a thing to be seen. They were all out in the yard eating corn. Then after breakfast I had to go back to feed the setting-hen and there I found an egg in each nest. And they are not warm.”

“I don’t think that is strange,” answered Belle. “It doesn’t take a hen very long to lay an egg, you know.”

“No, that is true,” admitted Janet, twisting herself in such a manner that the girls laughed and wondered what she meant.

The girls then went to the side-porch to plan for Sue, but Janet could not sit still. She squirmed and hunched her shoulders in such a way that Natalie finally noticed it and cried:

“Good gracious, Janet! Why don’t you sit still?”

“Yes, Jan, what ails you? Are you nervous?” asked Norma.

“I don’t know what it is, girls, but I have never been in such misery. It must be prickly heat, I guess,” said Janet.

“Go upstairs and use talcum powder profusely,” suggested Belle, “before we start for Four Corners to see about the bees.”

Janet followed this advice and was comfortable for a short time after she rejoined the girls, but then the irritation of the skin began again and she wriggled worse than ever. All the way to Mrs. Tompkins’ house Janet said nothing but did a lot of acting.

Mrs. Tompkins showed her visitors her bee hives and gave them a great deal of useful information about the keeping of bees, then she said: “I’ve been looking for one of my hives to have a swarm every warm day we’ve had, lately, but they still keep on scolding and hanging around, so I imagine they are waiting for a sultry day which will foretell a good electrical storm. You know, bees like to swarm just before a thunder shower?”

The girls did not know this and were curious to know why it was, and Mrs. Tompkins replied that she figured it out her own way, but she had never heard the scientific reason for it.

“I watch the queen-bee and see how clever she is in her plans and movements, then I watch her train the tiny princess bees until they are large enough to start housekeeping for themselves, then I watch and see the queen-bee make her selections from all the workers and drones in the family, and she inspires them with a keen desire to move out of the old hive and find a new home. As the queen bee is the monarch in the hive, they follow and do exactly as she orders them to. She is constantly surrounded by loving guardians and it is impossible for her to ever fly away alone, or have any privacy.

“But she is a wise bee and knows that her workers hate a thunderstorm. A bee seldom flies far from home when rain or an electrical storm is threatened. So the queen bides her time, and when she can foretell a thunder storm hovering near, she starts the swarm going.

“First she manages to escape from her guardians and get out on the running-board of the hive, but her followers are close upon her heels. When she flies up to find a resting place they are close behind. Sometimes she manages to get some distance from the hive before she is overwhelmed with pursuers and brought to a full stop on a tree, or bush, or fence. It generally happens to be on the lower limb of a tree, and it happens more often that the swarm settles near the old hive.

“Once the queen settles on a resting-place all the other bees gather closely around her to prevent her escaping again. They fear she wants to run away from home, so they close in until the poor thing almost smothers. The bees will clasp their antennae through the hooked back-leg of the bee nearest them, and thus form a chain that keeps growing and circling about the cluster around the queen. Sometimes this swarm is so heavy that it falls from sheer weight. But generally the bees hanging on to the bough increase in numbers in order to hold safely aloft the hanging swarm.

“Once the swarm is large enough, it is best for the bee-farmer to gather it into a hive. This is when he beats a drum or a tin pan to imitate thunder. That always frightens the bees and the queen readily leads them into a new home. If a real thunderstorm overtakes the swarm and rain falls heavily before the farmer has gathered the bees into a shelter, he has lost them. For they will scatter and the queen will fly away never to return to the old home.

“Or she may try to re-enter her own old hive and be stung to death by the young queen and her subjects who are now ruling the place. In cases where a princess-queen leaves home to start a swarm, the swarm is never as large or difficult to manage, as the young queen seldom has as many devoted subjects to follow her as an old queen has.”

“Oh, how interesting, Mrs. Tompkins,” exclaimed Janet.

“Yes, we will be glad to have some bees and watch them work,” added Norma.

“If my bees swarm within the next few days I shall be glad to sell it to you. I’ll send word and you can come and get it,” said Mrs. Tompkins, generously.

“How fine! But how do we carry a swarm home?” asked Natalie.

“In your farmer’s hat!” retorted Janet, laughingly.

“Oh, you won’t have to worry over that. I’ll hive the swarm and send the hive right to the farm,” replied Mrs. Tompkins. “But you must be careful to locate them pleasantly, or they may wander off. Bees like plenty of flowers nearby, and the freedom of the fields, yet they want to hear human voices and be able to see their master going about, even if they seldom come in contact with him. They seem to feel secure and safe when living in the shadow of a home.”

“I wish we could drive Mrs. Tompkins home and let her choose a site for our bee-hives,” ventured Natalie.

“Could you come with us, Mrs. Tompkins?” asked Mrs. James.

“I can manage to get away from home for an hour, but no longer, girls. If Frances can bring me back again, I’ll go with you,” replied the obliging lady.

All the way back to Green Hill, Janet squirmed and scratched her neck and bare arms until the skin was raw. Mrs. Tompkins asked Mrs. James about it

“Do you s’pose Janet got poison ivy on her and the rash is just showing?” asked she.

“I hadn’t thought of poison ivy,” returned Mrs. James, “but it is something. And the poor child is wretched. What can be done for her?”

“Whatever it is, a little baking soda in water will cool her burning skin and leave her comfortable for a time. But she will have to keep on using it for any continued ease.”

Arrived at the house, Rachel was told to give Janet the baking soda, and then Janet went upstairs to dab herself with the wash while Mrs. Tompkins led all the other girls about the gardens seeking the place for the bees to live. The place the girls had selected proved to be the best and most practical. When they were coming back from the field-fence, Janet met them and went with them while Natalie’s vegetables were visited.

The garden scout had been telling Mrs. Tompkins how hard she had worked that morning to kill the potato bugs, and when that lady saw the plants she gasped, “Why Natalie, what did you do?”

“They look queer, don’t they? They were not so when I left them this morning.”

Mrs. Tompkins stooped to examine a plant and looked up inquiringly at Mrs. James, and asked: “How much Paris Green did she mix?”

Natalie answered. “Why, I mixed the lot of it. I was told how much to use for the space I had to cover, but I thought an extra quantity would surely kill them off quicker, so I used three times the amount directed.”

“My dear child! I fear you have killed the plants as well as your bugs,” sighed Mrs. Tompkins, sympathetically.

“Dear me, I hope I haven’t killed my heliotrope and asters, too!” exclaimed Norma, running away to examine her flowers.

Natalie was stunned at the discovery that her precious potato plants had been destroyed by her own carelessness. Norma found the asters too sturdy to dry up under the deluge she had given them, but the heliotrope was as dry as paper.

Both girls were inconsolable, until Mrs. Tompkins promised Norma new flowers to plant, and Natalie was promised as many healthy potato plants as had been killed.

“That’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Tompkins, but those potatoes won’t be my very own darlings!” wailed Natalie.

“Well, you’ve done a good deed, child, because no bug will dare go near that place again this year,” said Mrs. Tompkins, trying not to laugh at Natalie’s sorrow which was very real to the girl.

“I can’t even feed them to my pigs, and I was looking forward to the time when we could dig the potatoes for the pigs, right from the garden,” murmured Janet, understanding Natalie’s grief.

“I will take a look at your wonderful little pigs, Janet, and then I must hurry home,” remarked Mrs. Tompkins, hoping to change Natalie’s thoughts to something else.

They all stood near the pig pen but Janet warned them not to lean on it as it might fall over. Then Mrs. Tompkins spoke: “The pigs are underfed, Janet, for their age. What do you feed ’em?”

Janet told of all the feed she gave them but Mrs. Tompkins replied: “You do not give them sufficient milk. Little pigs must have more milk than that. Si feeds our pigs the skim-milk which they like as much as other milk.”

“That’s what I can do when the cow gets here, but milk costs too much, now, to feed it to the pigs.” So saying Janet led the way over to the chicken-house.

Since walking to the barn yard the itching had started to annoy her again, so that when they came to the hen-house she was twisting and wriggling as before. The chickens were out in the yard scratching for food, while the cock stood upon a stump and showed off his plumes in the sunlight. Janet felt a just pride in their looks.

“I’m getting from four to six eggs every day, now,” said she to the visitor. “I shouldn’t wonder but there will be two or three in the nests, now.” So saying she ran in and found three nice brown eggs.

“There you are! I told you so.” And she displayed them to the lady with all the vanity of a successful chicken farmer.

“Did you just get them out of the nests?” asked Mrs. Tompkins. Janet nodded her head smilingly.

“Have you any other hens besides those old ones?” added the visitor.

“No, only a setting hen. Want to see her? Come right in and tell me what you think of her.”

Mrs. Tompkins followed Janet through the door but when she saw the setting-hen trying to peck herself continually with her bill, and saw that the feathers were all gone from her neck, then she saw another hen on a roost, constantly scratching and picking under its feathers, a light dawned upon her.

The lady went over to the roosts and looked carefully at them, then she examined the boards of the sides and roof of the house, then she looked at the nests. Finally she gathered her dress closely about her and stepped forth.

“The place is alive with ’em!” declared she, once outdoors.

“Alive with what?” chorused the waiting hostesses.

“Why, with chicken-lice. Those hens won’t lay while they are being eaten up with the pests.”

“Chicken-lice! Horrors, what are they like?” came from the girls, but Mrs. James stood dumbfounded as she began to understand. Then she exclaimed:

“Janet, it isn’t poison ivy that’s bothering you but the chicken-pest!”

It was fully five minutes before the excitement quieted down again, and Janet was told how easy a matter it was to rid oneself of the nuisance. But Janet argued over Mrs. Tompkins’ statement that chickens would not lay if they were too badly troubled with the lice. She held up the eggs as evidence of what she said.

Then Mrs. Tompkins said sarcastically: “That Ames man had no right to take you innocent girls in like he did. He must have known that ancient old bird of his was no kind of a rooster to sell. And them hens—well I know them to be six years old. They can’t lay eggs any more, they’re too old.”

“Then I’ve got freak hens, for they lay every day!” persisted Janet.

Mrs. Tompkins was driven to speak outright now, so she said: “Are you sure the eggs do not come from the house?”

This was a poser that no one could answer, so Janet was quiet. But Mrs. James said: “What can we do to rid the chickens of the lice?”

“Well, first of all keep them out in the yard while the house, inside and out, is being white-washed with good slacked lime. Then take each chicken and give it an alcohol bath, being careful not to get it in the eyes, or mouth, or ears.”

After a moment’s pause she added: “If they was my chickens I’d take them all back to Ames and make him exchange ’em. He won’t dare let this fake deal get out at Four Corners.”

Natalie and Janet had not said a word about the hens until Mrs. Tompkins spoke about the “fake deal” but Janet knew it was her duty to explain.

“Natalie and I picked out the rooster because he has such lovely feathers, and we thought the big hens would lay the biggest eggs, so we selected them for the same price.”

“Mr. Ames begged us to take Rhode Island Reds and another rooster, but we wouldn’t,” added Natalie.

“He said the hens were old and wouldn’t give satisfaction, but we thought he said that so we wouldn’t rob him of his finest big hens,” explained Janet

As the truth about the bargain began to be understood, Mrs. Tompkins and Mrs. James laughed heartily. But Janet whispered to Natalie: “I wonder if he will exchange them now?”

“We’ll tell him right out that we need hens that will lay,” said Natalie.

By this time they had reached the stoop of the house, and Janet glanced down at the three brown eggs in her hands and then looked up at Rachel who stood perplexed at the few words she had just overheard.

Mrs. James looked straight at her and said: “Rachel, how many eggs has Janet sold you now?”

“About two dozen, Mis James, countin’ dese free.”

“Well, I’m wondering who is standing the expense, you or me, or the house?”

“Why?” asked Janet, amazed at such a strange question.

Rachel gasped when she realized that she might have to pay Janet for the eggs she bought from her and also pay the house for the eggs she stole for the nests. But Sam joined them and said:

“Aunt Rachel tole me to put an egg or two in the nestes every day, but I liked to see Mis Janet smile so I put in more and more. Dat’s how she got so many from the pantry box.”

Such a roar greeted this confession that Rachel went in and slammed the kitchen door, and Janet turned to throw the eggs at Sam, but he had bolted.

“Never mind that, now, Janet, but come with me and let me help you get rid of the chicken-lice,” said motherly Mrs. Tompkins. So Janet was comforted in more ways than one before Mrs. Tompkins went home.

CHAPTER X

JANET ADDS TO HER STOCK FAMILY

That evening at supper Janet was unusually quiet and Natalie remarked it. “Well,” said Janet despondently. “I was wondering if one of the scouts would buy out my business. I’m going back home.”

“Good gracious! You really do not mean that!” exclaimed the girls in chorus.

“I may as well, what’s the use of staying here and not succeeding in anything.”

“But Janet, you are just beginning to raise your stock,” argued Mrs. James.

“I’m not raising anything but trouble, so far as I can see,” sighed Janet.

“If you think you are having such a time of it, what do you think about poor me! But I haven’t said I would sell out,” was Natalie’s comment.

“Nat is coming right up as Independent Individual, isn’t she,” laughed Belle.

“Yes and Jan is falling behind to the rear. If she isn’t careful she’ll have to resign her place in favor of Natalie, as ring-leader of us girls,” added Frances. These remarks were made to enthuse Janet with a little more spirit to resist circumstances.

“It would really be a pity for Janet to leave us now just when Susy is about to join us,” ventured Mrs. James, wisely.

“Oh, to-morrow is Saturday, isn’t it?” exclaimed the girls, and Janet smiled at the thought of the calf. Thereafter no one heard further that Janet wished to dispose of her business interests.

Early Saturday morning the scouts from the house were hanging onto the gate or over the picket fence, watching for the farmer who was to bring the cow and Susy. Mrs. James finally came down the steps of the porch and crossed the lawn to join them.

“Girls that lawn is a sight! It should have been mowed long ago, but we have had so much to think and plan about that it was forgotten.”

“Why mow it now just as the cow is coming. Let her eat off the tops,” suggested Natalie, to the amusement of her companions.

“That’s a good idea, Jimmy,” added Janet. “Instead of taking Sue to pasture in the field we will let her graze here.”

“Besides, Jimmy,” said Norma, “we could never run a blade through that grass. It will need a scythe, first”

“And that means Farmer Ames for half a day again,” sighed Mrs. James, thinking of the cost of keeping a lawn in order.

“We’ll just have Folsom tether Sue out here when she comes and we’ll see how much grass she can cut down in a day,” laughed Belle.

“Couldn’t we tether the calf here, too? You always see a calf out in pasture with her mother,” remarked Frances.

The members of Solomon’s Seal Camp appeared now and joined the others to await the coming of their corporation capital. Not long after the scouts came to the farm-house, Dorothy Ames was seen hurrying along the country road. Then she explained that she wanted to see Sue and Susy and appraise them from her experience with cattle. Finally Nancy Sherman and Hester Tompkins came from Four Corners and the membership of the two scout patrols was complete.

The girls began to feel impatient, and Janet even ventured to say: “Maybe that old farmer won’t bring them to-day,” when a heavy lumbering farm wagon was seen coming down the road.

The cow was tethered on the lawn as Mrs. James directed the farmer to do, and the calf was taken to the rear-grass plot and staked there because Folsom said the cow had better not see too much of her calf or she would not graze, and then there would be no milk. As plenty of milk was the great objective of the corporation the scouts were careful to carry out the man’s advice.

Rachel and Sambo lost no time in joining the admiring owners of Sue, and then arose a debate between the Four Corners’ farmer girls and those of Solomon’s Seal on one side, with Rachel, Sambo, Mrs. James and her girls on the other side, as to the best points of the cow. As each one had the right of her own opinion, being a shareholder in the cow, there was a general “kaffe-klatch” without the kaffe.

Finally, the admiring owners grew breathless and could find no new term in which to voice their admiration and satisfaction of Sue, so they transferred their remaining opinions to the calf who was rolling and kicking playfully upon the back lawn.

“Isn’t she just too darling for anything!” sighed Janet.

“Aren’t you glad you didn’t find a customer for your business?” added Natalie, grinning at her chum.

This started the disclosure that Janet had wanted to go home the previous evening because of her troubles with the stock.

“Did you see to it, Janet, that the chicken-house and fences were white-washed?” asked Mrs. James.

“No, Frances is to bring back the lime from Four Corners when she goes to the store this morning,” was Janet’s excuse.

“What about the hens? Did you walk over to Ames and see if he would exchange them for you?” persisted Mrs. James.

“Now you know I didn’t, Jimmy! Haven’t I been busy all morning watching for Susy?”

Everyone laughed at Janet’s form of occupation, but Mrs. James said: “Procrastination never succeeded when I lived on a farm. Farming is one form of work that brooks of no postponements.”

“I’ll get out the car now, Janet, and we’ll run over to Ames and then drive on to the store for the white-wash,” offered Frances.

“I’ll go with you, Janet, and help you pick out good hens from Uncle’s flock,” added Dorothy Ames.

“And when you come back with the alcohol and white-wash, we experienced farm scouts will help you clean the fowl and white-wash the coops,” added Nancy.

Dorothy went with Janet to help Sam catch the chickens which had to go back to their former owner, but the little chicks and the setting hen were left undisturbed. When the prisoners had been placed in sacks the stock scouts, Dorothy Ames and Janet and the chickens were stowed away in the car.

When Dorothy explained to her uncle about the hens, he shook his head slowly as he replied: “I tried my best to make Janet buy young hens but she thought I was doin’ her out of a bargain. Now she has seen for herself!”

Janet admitted the fact, and Farmer Ames led the girls to the large chicken-run to permit them to make another choice.

“If I were you, Janet, I’d take some Rhode Island Red hens and a rooster. They may not look so large but they are the best layers and smallest eaters of all other well-known kinds of hens,” whispered Dorothy, when the three girls stood wondering what to do.

“I tole Janet, when she was here afore, to take a few guinea-hens, cause they are fine layers, you know, Dot,” added Mr. Ames.

“I’d much rather have a few ducks, Mr. Ames,” said Janet.

“But I warned you that ducks is hard to keep well unless you make a special business of them. Geese is much easier to keep.”

“Well, then, I’ll take a few geese instead of guinea-hens. Somehow or other, I despise their struts, and their shrill cries, and the speckles on their feathers!” declared Janet.

These three reasons for not wanting guinea-hens made the farmer laugh with amusement. He never as much as saw one of those objectionable features with his guinea-hens. He saw the business interest in their slight need of food and the eggs they laid.

So Rhode Island Reds were taken in place of the old hens and rooster, and then Janet felt that she owed Mr. Ames an extra sale for taking so much trouble with her exchanges. He had thrown the sacks in which the infested hens had come, out upon the ground and taken new bags for the Rhode Island fowl so they need not be troubled with the plague of a poulterer.

“Now I’ll pick out the geese,” said Janet, having quickly figured up the cost and deciding that she could afford them.

“Do you want to pick them out yourself?” asked Ames.

“No, I am going to trust to Dorothy’s and your wisdom,” was Janet’s rejoinder.

“Then I’d say, don’t take a gander and geese, Janet,” was Dorothy’s advice, “take goslings. They are very much cheaper and easier to feed and care for.”

“Besides, they grow up fast, to geese and ganders, Miss Janet,” supplemented the farmer.

“I never thought of the goslings. They’ll be much cuter, too,” was Janet’s delighted reply. “How many goslings could I get for the price of a gander and four geese?”

“I can let you have ’bout twenty goslings,” estimated Farmer Ames.

“Oh, what a lot. Then I’ll take goslings, by all means!”

“Better not take them now, ’cause you’ll want to fix up a separate coop and yard for ’em. If you let them run with the hens, they’ll soon have their down picked off and then they’ll get nipped and bitten by the hens that don’t agree, nohow, with geese.”

“Will you bring them over to Green Hill for me, some time when you pass there?” asked Janet.

“Yeh. And I should advise you to leave the hens here until that chicken house is well cleaned and ready for new chickens. All them chicks have to be bathed, you know, to keep lice from increasing and getting on the Rhode Island Reds.”

As they left the chicken yard Janet saw the pigeons on the barn-roof, cooing and billing tenderly.

“Dear me, I do so want to have pigeons, too. I love to watch them mount up in the sky and drop like a stone until they almost reach the ground, and then suddenly soar again. I have seen those tumbler pigeons of yours do this until they remind me of an aviator doing the loop-the-loop in his aero-plane,” said Janet

“Pigeons is easy to rear, but you don’t want to take everything at once and not be able to care for anything,” was Farmer Ames’ wise advice.

“I don’t think pigeons are so easy to raise, Uncle,” was Dorothy’s opinion. “They want quiet and protection, as they never fight for their lives, like chickens and other kinds of fowl do. A cat or a rat can catch and kill a pigeon without combat from the victim. One has to have a mighty good pigeon-loft that is proof against prowlers, if one wants to keep the birds.”

“I forgot you had so many pigeons, Dorothy. I think I’ll come over and let you show me how to care for them before I buy any,” remarked Janet.

Mr. Ames considered this a wise plan, and so the girls left him with his promise to deliver the chickens and goslings as soon as the coops were in order to receive them. Then Frances drove to Four Corners for the mail, and Janet bought a white-wash brush and the materials with which to cleanse the coops.

The scouts all helped with the task of white-washing the house and bathing the chicks. Mrs. James advised the girls not to disturb the setting hen but to let her handle that important part of the work.

It was sunset before the work was completed, but once it was done, Janet felt that her friends had accomplished a great deed for her future success—to say nothing of future physical comfort.

“If only we could send word to Ames that everything is ready for the chickens,” said Natalie, as they started for the house.

“To-morrer is Sunday, you know,” was Sam’s reminder.

“Oh pshaw! I forgot all about it,” said Janet.

“Then Janet will lose another day without getting any eggs from her hens,” was Natalie’s disturbing suggestion.

“I don’t see why I can’t go over now and get them,” said Janet.

“What have you decided to do about Susy. Has she a shed to sleep in?” said Mrs. James, calmly.

Janet turned and looked at Sam. He shook his head.

“Can’t Susy sleep in the barn for one night?” asked Janet.

“I don’t know why she couldn’t, but it isn’t fair to the calf to make her pay in discomforts just to humor her mistress with the chickens.”

The scouts had stood around listening to this conversation, and now they whispered with Miss Mason. The result was the captain offered to help Janet, not only to get the hens that evening but also to clean out a shed and repair it if necessary, for Susy’s tenancy.

“Then you all must be my guests to supper at the house. I won’t think of keeping you here so late for my affairs and then let you go back to camp and cook your supper. If Rachel can arrange for so many extras, it will be great fun for us all,” said Janet.

Rachel was always glad to have company and she hastily planned. “We kin eat on the side porch where dey is enough room. Sam kin wait on table, and I will cook and serb. Go along, honey, we’ll hab a fine time!”

This important event being satisfactorily settled between Janet, Rachel and the scouts, all hands went to work again and in another hour’s time, the shed was so far completed that Frances was dispatched for the chickens. The goslings had to remain with Ames until their coops were ready on Monday.

When the scouts had completed the remodelled homes for Susy and the cow, they triumphantly left the barn yard, eagerly planning about the gosling’s coop and the pigeon loft they said they would help build for Janet. These tests in carpentry would win each scout the badge she desired.

As the procession reached the house they were surprised to find that Rachel had already milked the cow and was now busy straining the milk. Sue stood quietly waiting at the end of the lane for Sam to show her to her hotel and then give her her supper.

The girls were disappointed that they had not been present at the very first milking of their capital stock asset, but Rachel did not confess that she was not so sure of her old-time cleverness at milking and preferred to experiment without an audience. Now that she found she had not forgotten the knack of milking, she was as eager to show off to the others as they were to see her do the work.

Frances brought home the chickens before supper was ready, and Janet jumped in the car as it came past the side-porch, to accompany Frances and Dorothy to the barnyard. Then the hens and roosters were taken inside the chicken-house and left to seek their roosts for the night. They had been fed before the transference took place, so there was nothing to disturb them again that night.

That supper was a gay one, with scouts sitting on the steps, sitting on boxes, and sitting on the floor of the piazza, eating, drinking and making merry, because all troubles seemed past and the future beamed brightly for them.

When the babel of voices began to quiet somewhat, Miss Mason remarked: “If a swarm of bees has to be hived on a Sunday what would you scouts do?”

“Why, hive them, of course,” was Janet’s sensible reply.

“Just the same as if we fed the cow, or removed the eggs from the chicken-nests,” explained Natalie.

“Well, I was wondering if Mrs. Tompkins would do that, as she is very particular about Sunday work, you know,” mused Miss Mason.

“She’s a good woman and a conscientious one, but I would not say she was a fanatic. Let us remember the words of the Master when he rebuked the hypocrits with the question of ‘Who would not save a sheep on the Sabbath Day if it was in danger?’” said Mrs. James.

“Now that reminds me, Jimmy! When we come across any sheep that may be for sale, I think it would be most interesting to have one or two on the farm, don’t you?” said Janet.

“Oh, sheep are so interesting!” cried Norma.

“I love to watch them graze in a field,” added Natalie. “And we have such a large field that it won’t cost Janet anything.”

“What are sheep good for, anyway?” asked Practical Frances.

“Goodness me! Didn’t you know that wool came from sheep?” exclaimed Janet, amazed at such ignorance.

“I know it, but you need a flock of sheep to derive any results from them. The wool of one sheep won’t make a shirt.”

When the laughter this remark created had subsided, Mrs. James said: “We won’t discuss the sheep question until we have finished housing and caring for the other stock Janet has thrust upon us. We have enough work cut out for the next few days without planning for sheep.”

When the scouts bid their hostess good-night, they left with the plans all arranged for early Monday morning. The coop for the goslings was to be built, and a pigeon loft constructed in the gable end of the barn.

CHAPTER XI

BREAKING THE TENTH COMMANDMENT

Sunday morning was generally observed with an hour’s more sleep and a leisurely breakfast. Because it was not a work day, there was no sense of hurry to accomplish a task. But the Sunday following the arrival of the cow and calf at Green Hill Farm was an exceptional one for the farmer-scouts.

They were too eager to try a hand at milking Sue to stay in bed and allow Sam or Rachel the same pleasure. And then there was Susy, who was too cute for anything when she was being led so docilely to and from the back lawn. Had she not skipped obediently in Sam’s footsteps last night when she was taken to the new shed.

Consequently, the whole household was astir at dawn this Sunday morning, and Sam had the entire family to escort him to the barn for Sue and the calf.

“Shall we milk the cow in the stall or out of doors?” asked Sam, as they neared the barn yard.

“Every one milks the cow in the yard,” said Natalie from having seen the Ames’ follow that custom.

“All right; I’ll bring her out of the stall and you kin show me where to stan’ her. Then we’ll start her on her breakfast to keep her quiet until she’s milked,” agreed Sam.

The girls chose a shady spot quite close to the pig pen, and here Sam was told to bring Sue. The bright new pans attracted the curious attention of the three little pigs, and the large brown beast which now came across the barn yard made them tremble with apprehension, for they had never remembered seeing such a big creature before.

Sue followed Sam until she reached a given point and then she balked. For no apparent reason whatever, she refused to budge. She was standing in the sunshine with no nearby shade where the girls could stand while watching the process of milking.

All Sam’s coaxings and threats failed to move Sue one step. There she stood, blank-eyed and calmly chewing her cud, but with no intention of being moved. Sam pulled, and he pulled, then he went behind and pushed with might and main. Suddenly, without warning, Sue kicked out with a left hind heel and Sam caught the hoof in his stomach. It doubled him up on the ground so that in holding himself with both hands he let go the leading rope that was tied to the cow’s head.

Sue seemed to think she had accomplished the purpose for which she had balked, and now she scampered across the barn yard and turned to face her corporate owners. Her tail switched nervously against the frail fence of the pig pen, and her rear heels acted as if they stood on red coals—they twitched and jumped in turn.

Sam was helped to his feet again by Rachel and Mrs. James but he entertained no resentment against Sue. He merely remarked: “Dat’s the way wid cows!”

He chirped sweetly to Sue and held out his hand as if to assure her that he held a feast in his palm. In this manner he again approached the cow. But he was facing her this time, and his courage rose accordingly. He knew she could not kick with her forefeet, and before she could wheel to lift her hind foot again he could get out of the way.

Sue watched with lowered head as Sam came up to her and then with a fearful kick of the hind feet she jumped and ran back to the barn. But she left dire results of that kick against the fence of the pig pen. A large break gaped at the girls, but they failed to see it then, as their entire powers of concentration were centered in events about to transpire at the barn.

Sam hurried after Sue and the girls hurried after Sam, leaving the three curious pigs to follow their own sweet wills. Just as Sam came forth again, leading Sue after him, the pigs crept out of the break in the fence and stood watching this new approach.

This time the cow did not balk about walking over to the shady place, because Janet held the pail of tempting breakfast right under her nose and she followed after. But the pigs ran in different directions to prevent a wholesale capture by their owners.

Sam was walking backwards while leading Sue, to give himself ample time to escape if she ran for him, so he did not see a pig running blindly toward him. The shouts and shrill warnings of the girls came too late! The pig went head first into Sam’s legs and toppled him over backward. This gave the leading rope a sudden yank that Sue resented.

Mrs. James, Rachel and the five girls now gave chase to the pigs who had not yet found a way out of the barn yard. Consequently two of them were captured and thrust back inside the shed, but the third one was still at large.

Janet called advices to her companions: “You all form a circle about Seizer and we will close in gradually. When we get him in a close ring we will pounce on him and hold him until we carry him back to the pen.”

Because the pig had displayed such wisdom and diplomacy in other battles with his brethren and his owners, and also managed to seize the best of all the feed given the three of them, he had been named Seizer. While Janet was issuing these orders Seizer stood innocently staring from one scout to another. Finally he saw the circle closing in about him.

He seemed to ponder which might be the right spot to attack—for a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Then he made a determined dash for Natalie.

Now Natalie had been watching Sam’s heroic efforts to calm the cow, and her eyes were not all for Seizer, so she was taken unawares. The pig ran head down right into her shins and she went down upon her knees, but the wily creature dodged the fall and doubled back to dash quickly against Janet.

But the stock scout was ready for the onslaught. She had braced her legs and planted her feet firmly apart when Seizer made his dive. She was stooping slightly forward in order to grasp his lean body. But the pig swerved when he was almost within reach of her fingers, and ran blindly for Mrs. James.

He met with the folds of a long skirt that were unfamiliar to him, so he gave that lady no opportunity to catch him but flew back at Janet again. These turns had all been so unexpected and sudden that the scouts forgot to close in as they had been told to do. But when the pig ran between Janet’s ankles hoping to run out that way, the scout spasmodically closed her feet together and caught Seizer. In another moment he would be away again, but in that moment four girls threw themselves upon him and the little pig was captured. He wriggled to no good, and he was soon penned in with his brothers.

During this by-play, Rachel tried to assist her nephew. But the cow thought otherwise. She broke loose and started running down the lane that led to the house.

“The cow’s gone! The cow’s running away!” shouted Natalie, who stood gently rubbing her shins while her companions took Seizer to the pen.

This dire news started every one flying like leaves on a March wind, down the lane after Sue. But the cow had no evil plan in mind. She remembered the sweet luscious grass on the front lawn and when she arrived there she stopped of her own free will and began grazing.

No one was willing to go near enough to tether her to the steel pin, but Rachel came puffing up at the end of the race and wailed: “Oh, dat milk! She ain’t been milked yet and runnin’ like dat is enough to churn butter of dat ten quarts!”

It took the united courage and daring of eight people to tie the rope to the stake, and then the breakfast pail was held before Sue’s nose again, and Sam sidled along with the stool and milk-pail until he dared sit down and begin the work.

Being an amateur at the art of milking a cow, Sam forgot to strip the teats as any self-respecting cow is accustomed to, so Sue expressed her displeasure at such slighting in a sound whack of her heavy tail across Sam’s face.

The slap was so unlooked for and so stinging to his cheek that Sam yelled and went promptly over backwards on the three-legged stool. But Sue continued munching her feed as if no one had insulted her. Mrs. James now summoned all her courage to say:

“If the cow is to be milked this morning, I fear I am the one who has to do it.”

The girls held their breath and stood at a safe distance watching for developments. But Mrs. James patted Sue on the head and “cooed” softly to her, then she began slapping her back gently. Then she moved her persuading hands along the side of the cow until she reached the belly.

Now she sat upon the stool and stood the pail upright again. Very soon she began stripping in an experienced way and Sue waved her tail thankfully, for she had been nervous and restive because the milk had not been drained the previous night. Rachel had only milked out the quantity that flowed readily and left more than a quart still in the udder. This always causes a cow to feel uncomfortable and irritable.

When the milking was over and Sue had been left to her own devices Mrs. James carried the pail to the kitchen. The milk was measured and to every one’s surprise and delight there was more than Miss Jipson had guaranteed.

After the milk was strained Sam was told to take it down to the cellar and place it on the floor to cool. The pans were carefully covered with wire fly-protectors and left.

Breakfast was unusually late that morning, but none the less welcome when it did appear. Rich heavy cream was served with fruit, cereals and everything that could afford an excuse for it, because the milk of the previous night’s milking had produced the richest of cream in the morning.

“Well, we didn’t get the worst of that cow bargain, did we, Jimmy?” said Natalie, sipping the cream from her spoon.

“No, Miss Jipson was honest with us, but I feel angry every time I think of that trader Folsom,” replied Mrs. James.

“All the same, Susy is a darling,” remarked Norma.

Janet suspended her spoon in mid-air and gasped: “We forgot Susy was on earth in the thrills the cow gave us. I wonder if Sam gave her any breakfast?”

“Didn’t you feed her?” was Mrs. James’ question.

“I forgot it,” was Janet’s meek confession.

“I’m glad the calf is not incorporated with Sue in our stock company,” laughed Belle.

“I’ll go at once and attend to her breakfast—poor little Susy,” Janet declared, so she excused herself from the breakfast table and ran out of the house.

Sam was enjoying his breakfast of waffles and cream when Janet went through the kitchen. He admitted that he had also forgotten the calf in the trouble caused by Sue. So Janet went on to the barn yard to open the door of the little shed where Susy had been kept for the night, and let her come out to gambol about in her yard while she, Janet, was mixing the breakfast for her.

Susy had become so impatient at the enforced confinement that she not only showed her joy at being released, but she took it into her woolly little calf head to attempt to jump the bars of the pen built especially for her the night before.

Janet had hardly opened the door to place Susy’s breakfast before her when she was startled to see the little calf leap clear of the fence and land on the other side into the open barn yard. Away went Susy, bounding gayly over the privet hedges, across the flower beds and down the road that led to the woods.

And away sped Janet after her, shouting wildly to her friends at the house to follow and help in the capture. Before Susy had reached the cross path that went to Natalie’s garden, the girls who had just finished breakfast, ran out and joined in the chase.

The calf had no idea of where she was heading, but Janet feared lest the little creature run headlong into the stream and drown. She raced after the flying heels but she was too far behind to divert the calf’s direction. Then Susy changed her mind and the direction she was taking, and turned to the left to plunge across Natalie’s garden beds.

“Oh, oh! Drive her away from there!” screamed Natalie, when she thought of the havoc four hoofs can make.

Before any one could reach the garden to chase Susy away from it, the calf found the direct pathway to the kitchen. This she chose and came pattering clumsily up to the stoop steps. She had sniffed the milk for her belated breakfast waiting on the steps.

The line of scouts ran nimbly after her, and formed a circle to prevent her going in any other direction other than up into the kitchen, or remain where she was to be harnessed. She chose the latter as being the least doubtful.

“There now! Both bovine scouts are captured for the day and we can sit down and remember it is Sunday,” said Natalie.

“Rather a tardy beginning of the Sabbath,” laughed Norma.

“‘Better late than never,’” quoth Belle.

“Janet, I fixed the warm milk fer Susy’s brekfus’ so you’d better give it to her now,” called Rachel from the kitchen.

“Is this it in the deep pan?” asked Janet.

It was, so Janet lifted the dish while Natalie and the other girls led Susy by the tether-rope to a shady spot under the apple tree to eat her breakfast. But the calf sniffed at the warm milk only. She refused to taste a drop of it.

“She isn’t hungry, yet. We’ll leave it here for her to drink when she wants it,” said Janet.

So Susy was tethered on the grass back of the house and the pan of milk was left nearby under the tree so she could lap it if she wanted to. As the girls gathered about Mrs. James who was sitting on the porch with an open Bible upon her lap, Janet smiled.

“We haven’t made this Sunday a day of rest, thus far.”

“I was just looking over the Ten Commandments,” added Mrs. James, “and I wondered if it made any difference if you work because of necessity, or only for gain.”

“And we worked ‘our maid-servant and our man-servant, and the strangers within our gates,’ as well as the cattle, didn’t we,” said Janet.

Rachel appeared in the doorway from the dining room and said: “Natalie, you forgot to pull dat lettuce last evenin’. I tole you we diden’ have no salad fer Sunday ’cause you want to make us buy your lettuce.”

“I’ll go now and gather enough for dinner and supper, as long as I have sinned, already, on Sunday,” said Natalie, running away before any one could object to the plan.

Enough garden lettuce was gathered to last for three days at the rate of three meals per day, but Rachel kept that secret to herself. Then just as Natalie had bathed her warm face and seated herself once more on the breezy porch, Hester Tompkins ran in at the side gate and called to Mrs. James and the girls.

“Mother sent me post-haste to tell you that a great swarm of bees was found down the road about a quarter of a mile from us. No one knows whose it is, and there it hangs. If we delay much longer in hiving it it will wander away and be lost.”

The girls were up and dancing about in a moment, and Mrs. James said: “What does your mother want us to do about it?”

“Well, she thought that if you scouts wanted the swarm, it is a dandy one to start a colony with as it is so large and compact. If we can get home again in a few moments and carry Mother and Father to the spot, with a hive, we can capture it for you.”

“If it’s a lost swarm, it won’t cost us anything to buy,” ventured Janet.

No one had thought of that but now they were more eager than before to secure the swarm. So Frances had the car out of the barn in a jiffy, and the girls stood waiting to jump in. Just as the automobile was slowing beside the porch, the scouts from camp ran up and wanted to know where they were going on a Sunday?

“Jump in, jump in!” ordered Janet, waving her hands.

“We’ll tell you on the way there!” exclaimed Natalie.

So the scouts jumped—some inside the automobile, some on the running board where they clung for dear life while Frances tore out of the yard, turning the corner of the fence on two wheels and just missing the gate-post by the width of a hair. On down the road sped the machine, completely enveloped in the dust it raised.

Frances was so used to the road by this time that she knew every rut, every rock, and every obstacle in the way from Green Hill Farm to Four Corners store. So, in spite of the blinding dust that choked the others, the driver of the car kept right on, steering by instinct as she raced for the swarm of bees—the prize.

But no one had known that the constable of the township had ordered extra deputies to watch the roads on Sundays and arrest any one found breaking the speed laws. Thus it happened that the dust blinded the occupants of the car so that they did not see the officer who was waiting for them to come close enough to hold up.

He called without having any result. Then he shouted but the car was almost opposite him now. In another moment it had flown past and he had but one thing to do—to shoot at the tires. So he aimed and plugged a hind tire.

The girls heard the report of the pistol and the sound of the air escaping from the tire but Frances never slowed up. In a few moments the car was bumping on a flat tire but a swarm of bees had to be hived, and tires were a secondary consideration.

By the time the car reached Si Tompkins’ house the occupants were glad enough to get out. The way they were jolted and jammed during the latter end of that race was too much for human endurance. But Mrs. Tompkins was waiting with the hive, and now stood wondering why every one jumped out.

“Ma,” explained Hester, “you and a few of the scouts go on with the hive, while me and the rest of the girls will hitch up Spark to the surrey and drive over to the swarm.”

That was agreed upon, and the two elder Tompkins with a large hive got into the automobile with Mrs. James and Miss Mason. Frances drove, and they were safely out of the way before the deputy rode up on his motorcycle and asked the scouts, who were waiting for Hester and the surrey:

“Did you gals see a speed demon flyin’ past here a few minutes ago?”

“We never thought to look out for him. Which way did he come?” said Janet, innocently. The girls never dreamed that the officer was looking for their own car and party.

“It don’t matter what way he come but I wants to know which way he went!” snapped the man. Had he been more polite he might have discovered that these girls had just come the way he came and he would have found that they were his quarry.

Hester now drove Spark out of the barn yard lane and called to her friends: “Hurry up girls, or we’ll miss the swarm.”

While the scouts were crowding into the three-seated surrey Hester said “How-de-do” to the man she knew, and then they drove away, leaving the officer baffled to find that the car with a flat tire had escaped him.

When the surrey came near the place where they heard a “rat-tat-tat” upon a tin pan, Hester slowed up and guided Spark over to a fence rail where she planned to tie him. Then the girls jumped out and followed Hester noiselessly over to the place where the adults in the party were standing.

The hive was placed right under an enormous swarm of bees, and Mr. Tompkins, encased in wire-mask and rubber gloves with long gauntlets, and a wire mesh armor covering his neck and upper body, was beating the pan regularly to call the bees to attention.

But imitation of Nature did not complete that hiving of a swarm because a genuine thunder storm now came up suddenly, and the rolling vibrations above caused the bees to break and seek madly for shelter. The queen was soon inside the convenient hive, and in a short time thereafter, every bee in the swarm had sought refuge from the threatening electrical storm.

“Isn’t that a wonderful sight! I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” exclaimed Janet, when the last vagrant bee alighted upon the running board and sought entrance to the hive.

“We can thank that thunder for this quick work. Some times a swarm of that size takes an hour or more to collect inside the hive,” remarked Mr. Tompkins removing the wire mask and the gloves.

“That thunder storm won’t touch us, either. It is already passing overhead,” said Mrs. Tompkins, gazing upward.

“I’ve only felt a drop or two of rain,” added Miss Mason.

“But it did a good job for us,” laughed Mr. Tompkins.

“If a farmer is entitled to claim a swarm of bees he has to hive, can the real owner of the runaway swarm demand payment in any way?” asked Mrs. James.

“There have been disputes over that claim but the usual rule is that when a farmer cannot find the owner of the swarm in time to save it, and he does the work himself, the owner must reimburse the finder the value of the swarm, or let him keep it.”

“Well, then, if there is no claim for this vagrant swarm, Mr. Tompkins, we propose to pay you the full value of it for your time and work,” said Mrs. James.

“I wasn’t thinking of that, at all, Mrs. James,” remonstrated Mr. Tompkins. “I was thinking of the fun the scouts would have in watching it hived and in carrying it home.”

“We know that was your sole intention, but we also want to show our appreciation of your thoughtfulness. If we were not here to want a swarm of bees you could keep this one yourself.”

They were still discussing the point of recompense when the car drove up beside the store door. Frances turned to ask Mr. Tompkins if he knew of a garage at Four Corners where the tire could be repaired before they started for Green Hill Farm.

“Why, Frances, I’ll do it myself. You never took me for such a poor farmer as all that, did you,” laughed Mr. Tompkins.

“You are a store keeper, but even so, I never knew a farmer could mend a tire tube.”

“A farmer has to know how to do pretty much anything, gal. He can’t send, whenever he likes, to a plumber, a mechanic or the different trades needed to keep places in order. If a farmer had to lose a whole day of farm work while waitin’ for a machinist to come from town to mend his plough or harvester, what profit would he have at the end of the year?” laughed Mr. Tompkins, kindly.

“Well, you’re right! We’ll drive in the side gate and stop in the back yard and repair the tire and put in a new tube,” answered Frances, impressed by the realization that farmers were, of necessity, very clever men.

By the time the surrey with the girls arrived at the store, the tire was almost repaired. Shortly after that, Frances backed the car out to the road again and the adults in the party were invited to get in and drive to Green Hill to establish the colony of bees. Hester was to drive Spark and the surrey with the girls crowded in it.

Frances had to drive slowly on the return trip as the hive of bees stood in the back of the car, well covered with a dark lap robe. This precaution was taken to prevent any startled bee from coming out during the drive. If one did venture forth on to the running board of the hive, and find how dark it was, it would believe it to be night and would hurry back inside to wait for morning.

The two vehicles passed the officer on the way back, and Hester called out: “Hello, Mr. Babcock—did you catch the speeders?”

“No, I didn’t! I don’t see how they got away so quick!”

Then as the surrey followed the automobile in through the side gate of Green Hill, Frances said: “What was that you asked the officer?”

When she heard of the search for the speeders who had an exploded tire, she suddenly gasped. Then she bent double and laughed: “Girls! I’ll wager you this car that we were the speeders with the shot tire! That spot is just about where the tire burst on our way to Four Corners.”

The more they pondered it the more convinced were they that Frances was right. But Mrs. James said: “No use confessing at this late hour. We were really speeding out of necessity.”

The hive was firmly placed in a desirable spot under the trees and then the new bee-farmers walked slowly back to the house. The Tompkinses were persuaded to remain to Sunday dinner, and then the topic of recompense was argued again.

“S’pose we leave the subject for a week day,” said Mrs. Tompkins. “I feel sinful enough after doin’ all this hivin’, to do a little Bible readin’ now to pay for my back-slidin’.”

The rest of that Sabbath day was kept as it is commanded in Exodus. But it was the zeal of keeping the Commandment that made Janet forget to inquire why Susy had not tasted the milk left for her that morning.

It was Rachel who found the milk sour and curdled and never touched by the calf. Then she poured it out and tried fresh milk to tempt Susy, but the calf backed away when Rachel thrust the liquid at her nose.

That afternoon, when it was time to milk Sue, Mrs. Tompkins offered to teach a few of the scouts how to do it properly. So Janet, Natalie and Norma tried the milking that time but they found it hard on the fingers. They soon tired and gave place to another of the group. Finally, Mrs. James finished the task to the great relief of the cow.

CHAPTER XII

SUSY’S COMPLAINT

After the cow was milked and bedded in the stall for the night, Sam came for Susy. But the little calf acted wobbly in comparison to her nimble jumping and activity of the morning. So he walked slowly to give her time to rest now and then, and they finally reached the shed which was her domain.

The following morning Sam came hastily to the house and asked his aunt: “Is Miss Janet inside?”

“Yeh. They all eatin’ brekfus’—why?”

“Somethin’ seems wrong with Susy. She can’t get up.”

“Law-sake! I’ll call Janet immedjit, Sam. Jus’ wait.”

So not only Janet, but the whole family, ran from the back door and wanted to know what was the matter with the calf.

“I donno, but somethin’ is, cause she won’t stan’ up an’ she won’t eat nothin’.”

Out to the barn yard they hurried, Rachel as usual bringing up the rear because of her size and breathlessness. Susy was watched for a few minutes, but she remained upon her side. Then Janet tried to coax her to get up by showing her the pan of milk. Still the calf paid no attention to the offer. Mrs. James stooped over her and said: “She looks all right.”

“How can you judge that way, Jimmy?” cried Janet, greatly concerned. “Susy can’t go pale, you know, nor can you see the flush of fever, even if she has one.”

Natalie placed a hand on Susy’s forehead to see if it was hot and feverish, and Belle remarked laughingly: “Feel her pulse.”

“How cruel of you, Belle!” exclaimed Janet, half-crying.

“Well, is there any other way you can tell if Susy is ill or merely pretending,” retorted Belle.

“She can’t pretend like a ’possum would,” said Norma, defensively.

“And to think she may die and I haven’t even paid for her yet. I owe all that money to Jimmy!” wailed Janet.

“Should the worst come to the worst, Janet, you’re better off than if you paid for her with your own money,” Belle said, teasingly.

“What do you mean?” demanded Janet.

“Jimmy could not collect because you could tell her to confiscate the chattel on which the mortgage was made,” laughed Belle. But her joking in face of such a calamity as a sick Susy, was her undoing. The girls unceremoniously told her to get out!

While they tried to push Belle out of the shed, Susy lifted her woolly head and gazed after them, then she flopped back again upon the straw. Mrs. James called to Janet to hurry back.

“Susy just tried to lift her head. I believe we can get her out in the air if we can carry her, or help her stand.”

As they tried to find a hold on the calf, she struggled upon her wobbly legs. Then she nosed hungrily at Mrs. James’s hands.

“I know, girls!” exclaimed Mrs. James, as a sudden memory flashed into her thoughts. “I had a little calf when I lived on the farm, and we had to coax her to drink for a few weeks after she was weaned. Maybe this is what Susy wants—a comfort, so to say.”

“Do you think she is too weak to stand?” asked Janet.

“Yes, I do. If we can coax her to eat she will be all right in no time,” declared Mrs. James.

“Sam, you bring the milk out to us, will you,” asked Janet.

The deep dish of milk was brought and placed before Susy and then Mrs. James held one hand down in the fluid, while she fondled the calf’s nose with the other hand. She managed to slowly draw the nose down to the milk, and when Susy sniffed the warm flesh of the hand in the milk, she began to lap. The hand very gently stroked the soft nose as Susy began lapping, and this was exactly what the poor little thing wanted. She had not been completely weaned from her mother and was afraid of unknown food.

Slowly at first, then as her courage grew, Susy began snuffling loudly as she fed. Finally she over-gulped just as babies will, and she choked as they too, do. She sent the milk flying out of the pan as if an underground explosion had burst upward. The anxious scouts had been close about the calf watching her feed, and Mrs. James was on her knees holding her hand in the milk, when the upspurt took place so every girl was sprinkled, and Mrs. James’s face was streaming with milk.

Susy never stopped for such a trifle as that, however, nor did she express any regrets for the deluge of milk she had caused. Then when all the milk was gone, the calf gazed with soulful eyes at Mrs. James. It was so plainly a look of gratitude that it made the girls laugh. A short time after the bountiful breakfast, Susy was as frisky as ever, and provided ample amusement for her admirers.

Janet walked to the house with Mrs. James and remarked: “I always thought a cow weaned the calf without assistance from others.”

“So they will if they are given time, but when a calf is taken prematurely from its mother, the weaning process has to take place in an artificial manner,” explained Mrs. James.

“It won’t be very pleasant to have to hold my hand in the pan of milk every time Susy wants to eat. I think we ought to wean her at once from a bad habit like that,” was Janet’s comment

“It is much like having a baby that sucks its thumb when it is hungry. But there is no aftermath with a calf while there are adnoids, dwarfed arch in the mouth, enlarged tonsils, and many other serious things that develop from thumb, or nipple sucking. I never see a child with a so-called ‘mother’s comfort’ in its mouth that I do not want to scream at the ignorant woman who allows it.”

“Well, Jimmy, I never knew that myself. I do not believe it is ignorance so much, as that one woman hears another one commend a rubber comfort for the baby to keep it quiet, so they use it.”

“What do you call that if it is not ignorance! Why does not the mother make sure that the sucking is safe before she gives the child the habit that is so difficult to break. I don’t blame the poor child, but it is the one that pays the penalty for the mother’s carelessness. If it were the mother who had to pay in physical pain and weakness the price of that ‘comfort’ sucking maybe there would be more mothers willing to hear the baby cry, or to take it up to soothe it.”

Belle had never heard of the dangers of rubber sucking for babies, but she then and there determined to warn every mother she met who allowed her baby to hold a “comfort” between its lips.

During the interest in their subject, Janet and Mrs. James stood a short distance from the others who were still playing with Susy. But quite suddenly, without due warning of her intentions, the calf resented the pulling of her curly hair on top of her head, and kicked out with her heels.

Fortunately no one was in line with the kick, but the girls shrieked and backed pell-mell away from Susy. Then she, beginning to cut capers as she did the day before, rushed to the end of the tether and pulled on it as if to loosen it. But it held.

Before the girls could get out of the way, Susy began to race in a circle just as great in circumference as the rope permitted. And circling wildly around and around, she wound the swiftly winding rope about the feet of the group watching her. In another moment they had been tripped over and were struggling to get out of the noose the rope was making. But Susy kept on circling until the rope was so short that it almost choked her.

Sam came to the rescue of the calf and after he had disentangled her from the rope, he mumbled: “I hopes I am here when Susy goes to de butcher!”

Such a torrent of abuse as that brought down on his head, drove Sam back to the barn to finish the pigeon coop. But that was not the last time Susy played the same trick upon the girls. She generally tripped them over when they were least expecting the playful act, and she invariably ended by snarling herself so completely in the rope that she had to be untangled every time.

That noon when Frances came home from Four Corners with the mail and the grocery orders for Rachel, she did not put the car up as usual. She left the groceries in the kitchen and then went to the side-porch where Mrs. James sat sewing.

“Jimmy, I heard the funniest thing that I know of, while I was at Tompkins’ this morning,” she began.

The girls instantly gathered around to listen. And Frances continued: “That officer who shot the tire has a farm several miles the other side of Four Corners. While he was chasing us, and trying to find out where the escaping villains went, his son rode a bicycle furiously to the place where he expected to find his father, to tell him he was wanted at home to keep a swarm of bees that was about to swarm from flying away. But he could not find his dad so he went back home to learn that the bees had already wandered away.

“The boy hunted all over the country-side for the swarm but could not locate it. Today when Si Tompkins told his customers of the fine swarm of lost bees he had hived on Sunday, one of them said: ‘That must be Babcock’s swarm he lost yesterday.’

“Mr. Tompkins investigated and is sure now that the swarm we secured were Babcock’s bees. He told me to tell you, so that we would know what to do in case Babcock puts in a claim for it.”

“That seems to be ‘adding injury to insult’,” laughed Janet, when she heard the story.

“I could hardly keep from laughing myself, when I heard how the officer missed his natural prey and then lost the very object we were speeding to win. I think he is entitled to the full value of the bees because we deprived him of making an arrest,” explained Frances.

“Girls, that will be the best way out of the whole case. We’ll pay for the swarm and we’ll pay Tompkins for hiving it for us. It is well worth the price Mr. Tompkins said the owner may demand of us,” added Mrs. James.

So a letter was written to Mr. Babcock explaining how the bees came to be on Green Hill Farm, but nothing was said about the identity of the speeders he had hoped to catch. This letter and a check for the swarm of bees was taken back to Four Corners that same day and left in Babcock’s letter box.

Sue had been grazing faithfully ever since she had been tethered on the lawns, but the contract was too large for her. Eat as constantly and ravenously as she could, the grass grew beyond her powers of grazing. Then Norma realized that a mower would be a necessity.

“Well, you are the flower-scout, Norma, and grass is a decorative feature of the farm, so it comes under your work,” said Natalie, laughingly.

“All right, if I have charge of the grass, I’ll ask Janet the rent for the cow who is feeding on my grass. I ought to collect enought that way to pay for a new lawn mower.”

“If you do that, I’ll charge you for Sue’s services in keeping part of the lawn down since Saturday,” retorted Janet.

“Stop bandying words, girls, and come down to the cellar to help us carry the old mower out. It has to be tried out to see if the knives work all right,” ordered Natalie.

So the old lawn mower left by the last tenant, was dragged up the cellar steps and overhauled by Sam. He examined the wheels and pronounced them able to turn. Then he examined the blades and said they seemed all right, but needed grinding, maybe. He examined the rest of the mower and his final verdict was that the mower was as good as any new one from the shops. So it was decided that Norma should try it out on the lawn.

Norma was about to pull the lawn mower across the grass to the front plot, when Sam said: “Jus’ wait a minute and I’ll fetch some ile and ile the machinery to make it run easier.”

Rachel ran indoors to the pantry and found the oil bottle and brought it to her nephew who then oiled the mower quite liberally. The mower ran splendidly as long as it was being drawn over the grass in the reverse order for cutting, but once Norma started to push it the proper way to cut, its blades balked. They would not move the least.

Sam was watching, and when Norma called that the mower wouldn’t go, he crossed the grass and had another look at it.

“It went all right back by the kitchen door,” said he.

“But it didn’t have anything to cut when you had it on a box and began spinning the blades in the air,” argued Norma.

“Lem’me try it. Mebbe you ain’t got strength enough to push it along,” remarked Sam.

Norma expressed a sneer at this statement and Sam tried to make the machine work. It balked exactly as it had for Norma. But it always acted perfectly when the wheels were being backed the reverse way.

“I reckon we’d better get a screw-driver and loosen the nuts up a little bit,” suggested Sam, after he had rattled the various parts of the mower.

One of the girls ran for a screw-driver and Sam began taking the wheels off; next the outside frame was removed and then the blades. When the entire mower was in sections, Sam searched anxiously for whatever it was that blocked the action of the blades. But he found nothing.

“It looks all right to me,” he announced in the tones of a specialist who has been summoned to diagnose a fatal disease.

“Put it together again and we’ll try it once more. It may work now that it has been doctored,” laughed Natalie.

But Sam could not assemble the parts as they had been before. He screwed wrong parts together and did other erroneous things that caused the girls who were watching him to laugh merrily. Finally he threw down the screw-driver and said angrily:

“I never said I was a machinist! I can’t fix the ole thing.”

Farmer Ames drove in just now with the goslings. When he saw the group of interested girls standing about Sam he pulled on the reins to stop the horse. Then he called out to ask what was the matter with the mower.

“That’s what we want to know,” retorted Natalie.

Ames jumped out of the wagon and crossed the grass. He looked it over critically, smiled at the way Sam had adjusted the parts in the wrong places and then took apart the mower again. He felt of the blades and looked, to report, to Natalie.

“Fust thing, them blades is so dull they won’t cut soft butter. And next thing, there’s a nut missing from inside.”

Everyone went down upon her knees to hunt for the nut and after a diligent search in the grass, found it. Mr. Ames fastened it in place and then shoved the mower a few feet across the grass. It ran nicely, now, but the knives did not cut anything.

“I’ll get behind and push it good and hard and see if it cuts,” offered Norma, jumping up to do as she had said.

The mower ran noisily across the grass, the blades clicking loud enough to chop down forest trees. But not a wisp of grass was cut when Norma finished the length of the lawn.

“It won’t cut!” declared Mr. Ames.

“But the knives revolve all right. They wouldn’t do even that before you fixed them,” replied Natalie.

“Maybe the grass is too long and needs a top-cutting,” suggested Janet.

“I says it ain’t no good, whatever. Quickest way to cut that grass is to buy a new mower at Four Corners,” said Mr. Ames.

Norma had stood still while this talk was going on but she now called out: “I’ll try it once more. I’ll run it through the middle of the lawn where the cow grazed off some of the longest grass. Maybe it will cut there.”

So Norma blithely pushed the mower easily over the lawn with the blades passing over the tops of the grass instead of through them. Suddenly the machine ran against a fragment of broken bottle that was hidden in the grass. Norma was moving quickly at the time, but the unexpected obstruction stopped the mower with such force that the handle-bar struck her at the waist line doubling her half across the wooden bar and making her grunt loudly.

She let go her hold on the handle and held herself with both hands while she groaned: “Oh! I’m cut in two instead of the grass.”

Her friends laughed heartily at her remark but Norma had not said it as a joke and now she took offence at their mirth. To pacify the angry scout, Janet called out: “That settles the mower’s residence at Green Hill Farm! Away it goes and we buy a new one of Si Tompkins.” Everyone agreed to this and Frances was authorized to get a new machine the next time she went to Four Corners.

The troop of girls, having settled the momentous question of a lawn mower, now followed Ames to the barn yard to see the goslings they had heard Janet describe as being the cutest things she had ever seen.

“I brought you two dozen, Janet, as that is just about what a gander and the geese you wanted would cost,” explained Ames, as he began lifting the fluffy little things from the crate and placing them in the coop.

“My goodness, Mr. Ames! I don’t know what I shall do with twenty-four geese when they grow up. Just think of all the corn they will eat before Thanksgiving,” exclaimed Janet.

Sam had followed the girls when Ames drove to the barn yard, and he now said soothingly: “Neber mind dat, Miss Janet. Dey dies awful easy when dey is little. Chicken hawks love goslin’s, and so do black snakes. Cats are plentful in the country, too, and dey kills more chicks and goslin’s—my! Besides, lots will die of disease, so you won’t have to spend much money on corn by fall.”

“I don’t see any nourishment in that, after my money has been spent for the goslings!” snapped Janet, peevishly.

The girls laughed, and Natalie said: “But think of the good you will be doing the hawks and snakes and cats, by feeding them with goslings.”

“Janet, don’t let Sam or anyone else frighten you,” said Ames, as he patted Janet on the back. “You ain’t lost no chicks that way yet, have you?”

“Not that I know of. I never counted them to find out.”

“Well, if a chicken-hawk was about, you’d hear about it quick enough from the noise the hens and rooster would make to warn the chicks to run home. As for cats, you haven’t kept one and my house is the nearest neighbor and we haven’t a cat, so there!”

This cheered Janet considerably, and she decided to try and raise the two dozen goslings in spite of Sam’s pessimistic views to the contrary.

Having deposited the goslings in the coops, Mr. Ames passed the pig pen on his way to the wagon. He stopped a moment to look at them and then said: “Janet, you got to feed them more milk. Now you got a cow why spare the skim milk? Pigs need about four to six quarts of milk a day besides other feed.”

“You mean six for the three of them?” asked Janet.

“No. I mean six quarts for one. Why a tiny baby drinks two quarts of liquid before it is six months old, and pigs is hungrier critters than babies. You are starvin’ your pigs.”

“I’ll go straight away and ask Rachel if she has any skim milk on hand for them!” declared Janet, running for the house.

When Frances drove to the store that afternoon for the evening mail, she ordered a lawn mower from Mr. Tompkins and borrowed his, meantime. He laughed when she explained how they had hoped the cow would keep the grass cropped short enough to spare them any effort at mowing.

“You’ll find the cow’s hoofs cut up the sod so badly that your lawn will be ruined if she keeps on grazing there. The man who lived on the farm before you took great pride in those lawns. He was always fussing over them and never let folks walk on them until August.”

CHAPTER XIII

FRANCES REBELS

Not only stock-raising and garden trucking progressed wonderfully for a few days, but the scouting also showed improvement in Patrol Number Two, after the acquisition of bees, goslings, pigeons, and lawn mower. When the scouts of Solomon’s Seal were not up at the house with their tenderfoot scouts, the members of the young patrol were over at the camp, engaged in scout pursuits.

Each scout had started a small garden patch for herself, accepting Natalie’s superior experience in such matters to win success and a badge as a garden scout. And then each scout decided to raise enough stock, besides the cow and bees they owned jointly, to enable them to take the test as farmer scout and win a badge for that, too. They were well along on the way to winning the badges for Dairy Scout and Bee Scout, by this time, and everyone seemed happy and eager to come out highest in the tests. All but Frances. She began to act discontented. Finally Mrs. James asked her if anything was wrong.

“Yes, lots of things are!” admitted Frances.

“Can’t you tell me what it is and maybe I can straighten matters out for you.”

“Well, I’m sorry I ever selected jitney driving for a profession, Jimmy. I see Natalie planting and harvesting the results of her garden—and we, too, enjoy the lettuce every day since it has been big enough to pull.”

Frances caught the glimmer of a smile at this remark, and questioned Mrs. James concerning her amusement. “I was thinking when you mentioned lettuce, Frances, that you can scarcely say we enjoy it so often as we have to eat it. Natalie planted so many seeds, besides the plants given her, that I fear we shall ‘go on’ as the brook in the poem ‘forever’—eating lettuce.”

“Well, it’s better to have too much of a good thing than not enough,” declared Frances, and Mrs. James agreed silently with that statement by nodding her head. “Then I see Janet’s kingdom doing so fine! the pigs expanding like a gas-filled balloon ever since Sue came to the farm. Susy growing stronger and more mischievous every day. The hens laying eggs as if for dear life. The chicks and goslings fast outgrowing their coops and associating with the older chickens when the corn is scattered in the yard. Even the pigeons are teaching their squabs how to fly, and Janet’s days are one long dream of success. But me—ah me!”

“What is wrong with you, Frances?” was Mrs. James’s astonished query.

“Even Norma! Look at quiet, poetical little Norma! She can offer us sweet posies, sniff at newly opened buds every morning, hoe, rake, and pat down the soil about the plants she has raised, and realize that she, as well as Natalie and Janet, is enjoying the fruits of her own labor. Then look at me!

“A conductor of a jitney! Not even my own motorman. I have to have Sam drive the car and he gets all the fun out of my life! No, I am going to strike and resign from business!”

Mrs. James could hardly control her face at such a ludicrous complaint, but Frances was in earnest and a laugh would end all further confidences from Frances, so she managed to say: “Don’t you think you have been as useful, if not more so, than Janet in her stock work, Natalie with the gardens, and Norma with flowers? What would we have done, Frances, were it not for your idea of running the car for us all this summer?”

“It was dad’s plan to leave it here anyway. I really am only a figure head in the matter,” grumbled Frances.

“But you have been the one always on hand to run errands and carry anyone who wanted to reach a place in a short time. Just think of the swarm, Frances. Without you that Sunday, we never would have captured that wonderful swarm from Babcock.”

Frances laughed at this memory. It was a high light in the otherwise dun colored days of her jitney life. But only dun to her after several weeks of driving about the country. Mrs. James understood, perfectly, that it was merely a case of dissatisfaction from satiation with her special work for a time being. If she had a change for a week, or so, everything would appear rosy and bright again.

“I was talking things over with Belle this morning and she agrees with me that our professions are not crowded as full of thrills as Janet’s, or Natalie’s, are. Belle says that all the worm-eaten antique furniture in New York State cannot measure up to the wonderment of seeking and finding for yourself a strange forest tree, and then classify it according to scout rules.”

“There is nothing to hinder Belle from taking a test in forestry,” murmured Mrs. James.

“She’s going to do it!” declared Frances. “But with me—I told Belle this morning, that speaking of thrills, the only real exciting drive I have had since I’ve been at Green Hill Farm was the Sunday we rode for the swarm of bees. In comparison to Janet’s thrills of hatching chicks from water-glass eggs, and Natalie’s way of killing potato bugs by killing the plants, too, my infantile thrill is weak!”

Mrs. James could no longer restrain her laughter but she apologized for it by saying: “I had to laugh at the pictures you brought up by your remarks.”

“Even the scouts of Patrol Number One have more fun in life than I get. Look at them; they cook, they build, they do all sorts of stunts in testing and winning badges for lines of work, then they hike, or swim, or drill and have other recreations, that I do not share because I am forever a car conductor!”

“Now, Frances, that is not so!” declared Mrs. James, seriously. “Patrol Number Two is hardly two weeks old and its members have had so many things to attend to that they had no time to devote exclusively to studying the scout customs and work. But once we get affairs running smoothly and orderly, we will forge ahead in our scout life, also. Patrol Number Two will cook, and build, and do all sorts of stunts, too, for tests and badges. And between times we will hike, swim, or drill, and enjoy other recreations with the scouts of Patrol Number One so that not even a car conductor will be able to complain about her dun-colored days.”

Frances smiled appreciatively, but was not silenced.

Mrs. James understood this and said: “What do you want to do beside the helpful profession you are now following?”

“Well, I have been reading the girl scouts’ handbook very carefully and I find several things I might group for my work. Nat would say I was consolidating and merging several lines into one,” laughed Frances, imitating Natalie’s voice and manner.

Mrs. James smiled too, but silently waited to hear more.

“I have planned to try for the test of motorist as given in ‘Scouting for Girls.’ When I have that badge, I will begin to study the birds because I find scores of beautiful and interesting varieties of birds in Westchester. And a man I know down near the village of Bronxville, where Belle and I went last week, told me that one can find rare birds which come North for a short time in summer and stop in the woods about there, but never travel beyond that section. When I heard that I wanted to start finding them and photographing each one I could see.

“Driving about the country so much with Belle on her quests for antiques, I have seen such beautiful bits of scenery and such gorgeous flowers and ferns, as well as birds, that I feel as if I were neglecting a wonderful opportunity when I fail to get pictures of them and study each interesting subject well enough to write it up afterward.”

“Frances you are quite right! I am so glad you think this way, as it shows that you have actually found the great thing your so-called jitney service has done for you. Do you not see that all these discoveries made by you would never have been made if you stayed at Green Hill and raised vegetables or stock? You can strive for and win badges in lines the other girls have not given a thought to. But you can interest them in these pursuits, just as they have interested you in stock and vegetables so that you actually wanted to give up motoring for their studies. Do you see?”

“I think I begin to see a glimmer of the truth,” admitted Frances, her face lighting up with relief.

“And let me add this bit of advice: If every one in this world wanted to do the same thing, what an interesting old place it would be. If every one looked exactly like everyone else, or if all had the same desires and tastes in everything, can you picture a more tiresome place to live on than our earth? But, because everyone has an individual appearance and individual ways and desires, the world is individual, also.”

Belle had crept up behind Mrs. James as she spoke the last words, and now she smiled as she said: “You’re right, Jimmy! I’ve told Frances about the different farm houses I’ve visited in these quests for furniture, and not only the homes, but the furnishings and owners of them are so different from each other!”

Frances then explained to Belle what Mrs. James had just said about selecting lines of work, and Belle nodded and added: “I have found a number of things I can add to my work of finding antiques, just as Frances can add those studies she mentioned to her motoring work.

“I come in contact with housewives who can cook and preserve the most delicious things! Frances has tasted many of them herself. I have been given recipes of viands that I’d love to try out, not only for the sake of winning a badge in cooking, but to be able to give others the benefit of the tests.

“Then I would like to try for a badge as needle-woman, after seeing girls no older than myself, making dresses and trimming hats for themselves and their mothers. I believe I can use a paper pattern and cut a gown out as carefully as those girls do. And I am sure I can stick a feather in my hat, or tie a ribbon about the crown, with as much deftness as those girls. But I never stopped to think of these things in the city where one can go to the shop and try on a ready-made suit, or buy a hat all made to wear, at once.”

“Ah, these are a few of the things city girls never can find in the city—the ways and means the country girls have of making two ends meet,” remarked Mrs. James.

“Another line I should like to study since hearing you mention that thing about foolish mothers giving their babies a rubber ‘mother’s comfort’ to suck upon to keep them quiet. I’d like to read up on that subject of child training, and learn all I can about the proper care and training of babies, then write a book to help ignorant and lazy or careless young mothers with their families. Think of all the trouble and suffering that can be avoided if mothers will use common sense and better judgment in rearing their children!”

“Bravo! Belle, I’m proud of you for that ambition,” exclaimed Mrs. James, and Frances smilingly added her applause. “If you will continue that line of study and work I’m sure that you will not only secure the badge for child nursing but also win success with a book if it is sensibly and carefully compiled.”

“I’m glad you agree with us in our wishes to add more studies to our present one,” said Frances.

“I’d like every scout in our troop to keep on adding to their knowledge just as long as they live. And even after they fancy their days of usefulness are past, I should want them to think—and then keep on working and adding to their understanding, for we have all eternity before us, and nothing ought to stop our progress and growth once we remove the limitation to Life.”

That earnest talk with Mrs. James inspired Frances and Belle with the desires to add to their storehouses of knowledge and intelligence whatsoever they could find worth while, but the experiences and successes of the two scouts in their individual works must be told in separate volumes of this series, as this book deals with Janet and her stock venture.

The scout members of Patrol Number One had been invited by the girls of Patrol Number Two, to a knot-tying contest to be held on the side lawn of the farm house. A post script added the most important item of the invitation, as is usually the case: “Refreshments served after the contest.”

At the appointed time the three scouts from Four Corners arrived at the house and busied themselves in helping the other girl scouts prepare the refreshments they planned to serve. Rachel was then left in charge of the goodies and the girls went out to welcome their guests who could be heard laughing and talking as they approached the house.

“Are we too early, girls?” asked Miss Mason, of the scouts of Patrol Number Two.

“Mercy no! We’ve been waiting an hour,” replied Natalie.

Having argued this difference in time to a finish, the two patrols were called to order by the captain. Then the usual ceremony took place. Having ended this the scouts waited eagerly for Miss Mason to announce the rules for the contest.

She addressed the new members of Solomon’s Seal Troop: “Scouts, you will soon end the second week of probation as Tenderfeet and from reports as well as demonstrations, I think you will successfully qualify when the period of probation is over. If you have read and studied carefully the rules given in the handbook for the tying of knots, there is no reason why you should not win this contest with the older members of the troop. But I wish to offer this opportunity for you to watch my girls in Patrol One demonstrate their ways of tying knots before the contest takes place. Those in favor of seeing this work first, rise.”

Of course, every girl stood up and thus voted for a display of ability in knot tying by the other scouts. And Miss Mason smiled as she asked them to be seated again while she read from the book:

“On page 484 we learn the uses for knots and the need for every one to understand how to tie knots.” Then she read aloud the introductory paragraphs to this chapter. Having finished it she called up her scouts of Patrol One to come forward.

“Members of Patrol Two will take notice: each one of my camp scouts has a piece of Manila rope five feet long and about one-quarter of an inch thick. You see that both ends of the rope are whipped to keep them from fraying. Have you scouts done the same with your lengths of rope?”

The scouts of Patrol Number Two replied that they had, so Miss Mason continued: “Scouts of Patrol One will now demonstrate the different kinds of knots mentioned in the book and show these Tenderfeet how quickly and precisely these knots can be made.”

The visiting scouts went through the various forms of knot tying, and when it ended with vociferous applause from the hostesses, Miss Mason said:

“Scouts, make a blanket-roll and tie a rope as taught in handbook for hiking and carrying over mountains, or cross-country.”

In an incredibly short time the scouts had rolled their blankets and bound the ropes about them, ready to sling over their shoulders for a march.

“Now pair off and make reef knots of each two lengths of rope, to demonstrate the way to lengthen a rope which may be too short for the need it has to be put to.”

The visitors deftly tied these knots, and Miss Mason said: “Now show the scouts how to make sure it is reliable when put to the test where safety and security of the knot is necessary.”

When this was proven, the captain said: “Show how a rope must be adjusted when a victim of accident has to be drawn up or lowered to or from a height.”

This performance needed a lightweight scout who could climb a tree or ladder and be saved from fancied danger. So the lightest member of Patrol One climbed the maple tree on the lawn and was soon sitting astride the bough. The life-line was flung over the limb and the girl managed to get into the loop and sit therein while she held to the rope above her head. The line was then lowered to the ground to show the efficiency of the knot that held the loop from slipping.

“Some day when Patrol Two visits us at Camp, we will show them how quickly one can be rescued from the waves. We’ll throw a line to one of our girls out in the stream and save her life,” said Miss Mason, after the last trial of the loop-knot.

Miss Mason then asked the members of Patrol Two to reply: “What would you do if you saw someone drowning, or fallen from a cliff, and the only way to save him was by means of a rope?”

Janet stood up and answered for the other girls: “We’d make the loop for the needy one to sit in, or we would tie knots in the length of rope so he could get a grip hold on the rope until he was drawn up, or could climb up, hand over hand.”

“That is correct. I suppose you all read the account given in our book of those people who went over the Lesser Falls of Niagara, who might have been saved had the rescuers known how to tie these knots. But the rope that was thrown stripped through the hold of the poor folks. Again the handbook says that had a bowline been tied in the rope, the victims of the disaster could have been raised in safety, for each one could have been seated in the loop and lifted without any struggle.”

After showing the approved methods of tying the bowline, the sheepshank knot, and other kinds in common use but not so commonly known to most people, Miss Mason declared the field was free for the contestants.

Although the scouts of Patrol Two were not as experienced as their competitors in knot-tying, Miss Mason and Mrs. James were delighted with their ability and speed in tying the knots.

A tug-of-war was suggested by Janet after the contest was over, and in this the scouts of Patrol Two showed their muscular development and strength over the members of the camp patrol. This success cheered the girls of the house patrol and made up for losing in the knot-tying contest.

It was now suggested that refreshments would be most acceptable because the girls were warm and breathless. So the three women, Mrs. James, the captain, and Rachel, offered their services as waitresses while the scouts relaxed and visited together.

When the wild-berry tarts and fresh-baked cakes, also the glasses of birch beer, were passed, the scouts smacked their lips in appreciation. One of the camp scouts remarked: “What delicious nut cakes. I love chopped almonds.”

But Belle laughed gayly. “They are not nut cakes, but I made them according to a recipe a girl gave me one day when I was out hunting antiques.”

“If they are not nut cakes, what are they?” asked several of the scouts.

“I used rolled oats such as we get for cereal, and toasted them brown in a pan sprinkled with sugar and butter. I stirred this in the cake batter which I had flavored with the meat taken from the cherry stones found under the trees. This meat was soaked in a teaspoonful of alcohol for an hour and made the cake taste like almonds.”

“Well, it proves positively that one can find all sorts of counterfeits,” said one of the camp scouts.

“‘All that glitters is not gold’ is hereby verified,” laughed Janet. “But the cakes taste good enough to be tried a second time.” This comment started the cakes around another time.

When one of the camp scouts asked how Belle came to do the baking, it was learned that not only Belle had added various pursuits to her chosen line of work that summer, but that Frances also, had decided to win a badge in several studies mentioned in the handbook.

After the visit was ended, the camp scouts invited the house patrol to visit them, soon, and try a contest that they would plan. The house scouts then accompanied their visitors down the road that ran to the woodland, but stopped at the pathway that crossed it, to go to the gardens.

Mrs. James and her house scouts watched the camp girls pass out of sight in the woods, then they walked over to see how Natalie’s new potato plants which had been given her by Si Tompkins, were growing.

CHAPTER XIV

SORROWS OF A STOCK SCOUT

“I declare, Jimmy, if those pigs keep on eating like this I shall have to cut down my own rations to enable me to pay for theirs,” sighed Janet, one morning, as she came from the barn yard.

The girls who overheard this complaint laughed, and Natalie cheered her by saying: “But wait until Fall, then you’ll sell your stock and realize a fortune all at once.”

“Nat, the dreadful part of this stock raising is, that one becomes so attached to the dears that one can’t bear to part from them. Yet I cannot take them home with me, so there you are!”

Belle laughed: “Picture Janet forcing an entrance to the Wendell’s exclusive apartment house followed by a line of grunting pigs, moulting hens, butting cows and cooing doves, to say nothing of a possible ram, and the swarm of bees.”

Such a homecoming created a roar of laughter in which Janet joined heartily, and felt better therefor. Before the mirth died out, Janet had reconsidered her refusal to drive with her chums in search of a sheep or lamb that she had been longing to add to the stock list.

“I’ll go if Frances will wait until September for payment of my jitney bill,” declared Janet, having made up her mind.

The girls jumped into the car that had been standing at the gate ever since Frances came from the store, and said they were ready to start. Sam was to be left at home this trip, as so much had to be attended to at the farm, and half a day without any one to keep watch over the gardens and barn yard gave Rachel too much to attend to. So Sam offered to remain behind and guard the precious investments.

Frances selected a country road that ran back into the hills to the east of the Westchester Hills. The scouts had never taken this direction before, but Frances said she was sure there would be more sheep pasturing there on the hills than on the fields of Westchester County.

They had been driving more than an hour in a zig zag route, looking at every farm they passed for a glimpse of sheep. Thus far they had not met with any success. But just as a sharp turn in the road was accomplished neatly by Frances, a cry went out from every girl in the car: “Look over there!”

On a steep side hill before them grazed a flock of sheep, two majestic rams and several cute little lambs. Janet felt all her wonted enthusiasm surge through her veins again at the picture before her.

The farm house was not far away and the scouts stopped to inquire if one or two of the sheep could be purchased.

“Sure! But I want to pick out the ones I’ll sell,” said the owner. Then he started along the road that led to the pasture.

The scouts followed delightedly, assuring Janet that this addition to her pets would finish what she needed.

The man then explained to Mrs. James that he had an extra fine ram with curved horns exactly like those pictured in the Bible, that he would sell at a bargain as he had no need for two rams.

“I only want one sheep and one lamb,” Janet said humbly.

“You’ll be sorry if you don’t take a ram, too,” said he.

Having now reached the fence that enclosed the field, the man climbed over but advised the ladies to wait where they were until he had found the ones he would sell. Then he added: “I’ll lead the ram over to you so you can see the gentle and loving creature he is. Once you look into his golden eyes and hear his musical call you’ll never rest till you have him.”

“I’m going to climb up and sit on the top rail, girls,” said Janet after the man left them. She climbed up and was soon imitated by all the girls, Mrs. James remaining outside the fence.

The girls watched the farmer coax the ram from his grazing to start him across the field. The ram followed meekly with his nose sniffing at the hand which held the bait all unseen by the girls.

“My, he is a beauty, isn’t he,” exclaimed Janet. “And so gentle, too, just as the man said.” In her eagerness to see the ram at close range, she sprang from the fence and stood waiting.

When the man and ram were not more than twelve feet from where Janet stood, an automobile flew past. The driver, seeing the row of girls sitting on the top rail of the fence, laughed and blew the siren so shrilly and continuously, that it racked their nerves. It proved that the ram had nerves, also.

Before his master realized what might happen, the meek animal lowered his head and charged. In another moment the farmer was lifted more than three feet above and along his course. But the ram was not pacified by this one encounter. It was as if the taste of combat made him thirst for more. He made a dash for Janet.

She was too quick for him, however, for she had started to crawl under the fence the moment she saw the farmer coming so unceremoniously through the air. The other astonished and frightened scouts turned as if with one thought, and scrambled to get over to the safe side of the fence. But this simultaneous action overturned the loose toprail in its still looser sockets, and all the girls were rolled into the tall grass on the roadside—the safety line.

The golden-eyed ram stopped short when defrauded of his second victim, but turned to make another assault upon the farmer. That individual, choosing discretion rather than valor, sprinted for the fence, also, and clambered to the toprail without thought or grace or business diplomacy.

This preface to Janet’s selecting sheep for her farm, brought about a change of heart, and all the good salesmanship the farmer showed later, could not persuade the stock scout that she needed any addition to her pets, at that time. But this did not say that the determination was permanent. Because it was not, as events later on proved. These events took place in August, when Norma’s flower gardens were producing, and so it is told in Norma’s scout story.

Late that evening, Sam came up to the side porch where the house scouts were entertaining the camp scouts with accounts of the stars and planets, and excused himself for interrupting.

“Dat cow ain’t just right, Mis’ James. I had her out to pastoor in the field as we ’greed to, and tonight when I milked her I finds the udder is hot as fire, and no milk comes out easy-like. Aunt Rachel says dat cow is sick!”

“Dear me, Sam, could she have eaten something in the lot?”

“I dunno, but just afore dinner this noon when I went to get her for a drink of water, she jumped up and down and made out to buck me. I left the pail and ran, but I tried to settle her nerves by sayin’ ‘S-sh! S-sh, Sue—s-sh!’ But she diden’ S-sh for nuttin’.”

“I can’t understand why she should act so,” said Mrs. James.

“Neider does Aunt Rachel. I was goin’ back for the pail of water when she ups and kicks so hard that the stake comes out the groun’. Once she got free she galloped around and at last she jumped clean over the fence and rushed across to the lawn. There she rolled in the grass and acted calm.

“’Bout dis time Susy began to blat and I was ’fraid Sue would get at the calf so I hurried and moved the calf to the barn yard out of the cow’s reach. When I got back to the house she was gone. Aunt Rachel and me hunted everywhere for her all across the pastoor lot, and around the house. Finally we saw her out in Natalie’s garden eating cabbiges and greens——”

Natalie here supplied a frightened interruption with shouting: “Oh, my poor garden again!” Then she rushed indoors, caught a flashlight and raced for her garden. But it was too dark to see how much damage Sue had done to the cabbages and greens, so Natalie came back to the house wailing that the Corporation would have to reimburse her for everything that was ruined.

“Mrs. James and Sam have gone to the barn,” said Janet.

“Let’s go, too, and see what ails the cow,” suggested Norma, and the other girls eagerly complied with the plan.

Mrs. James stood on a box that raised her high enough to allow her to look over into the cow-stall. She was directing Sam who was trying to coax Sue out of her stall so she could be examined. But the cow would not budge. The girls carried a plank over to the partition and placed it upon two boxes so that they could get up and see what was going on.

Sue stood with a decided sag in her spine and her eyes bloodshot and heavy lidded. Sam thrust out a hand and felt of her nose. “Hot as fire,” said he, in dolorous tones.

“If you could only get a look at her tongue, Sam, to see if it is coated,” suggested Mrs. James.

“I never tried that afore and I ain’t sure how a cow likes it, but I s’pose some one’s got to do it, so that some one looks like me,” was Sam’s resigned reply.

Sam tried to sidle in the stall to reach the cow’s mouth, but Sue suddenly moved and pressed against him so that he was flattened between her sides and the side of the partition. He could only kick, but kick he did until the cow moved away again.

“I thought I was done for, dat time, sure!” gasped Sam.

“Don’t give up yet, Sam. Try to hold her mouth until she shows her tongue. I will throw the flashlight on it to see if it is furred or clear,” advised Mrs. James, leaning far over.

Sam made a sudden grab for Sue’s head, but the cow was not in a humor to be tampered with, so she lowered her head and ran her forehead against Sam. Unfortunately she chose the pit of his stomach for her target so that Sam could not howl, but he threw up both hands pitifully for help. Sue then backed and stood diagonally across the entrance to the stall so that it was impossible for Sam to escape without coming in contact with her, and that he refused to even consider.

It was Janet’s bright idea to get the short ladder and lift it over the partition so Sam could climb out that way.

“Sue kin die for all I tries to see her tongue again!” declared Sam, emphatically, after he was on the safe side of the partition once more. He rubbed the tender spot of his stomach as he finished speaking and gazed reproachfully at Mrs. James.

“If Frances will drive, I’ll go and get Mr. Ames at once,” said Mrs. James, “the cow may die if we postpone help too long.”

Of course that caused everyone to want to help Sue, and in a short time Farmer Ames was brought to the scene. He looked at her tongue, felt her nose, turned back her eyelids, and asked many questions before he got at the truth. Then he laughed.

“Want to know what I calls her disorder? Too much cabbage! She’s got colic. Sam and I will have her fixed in no time.” Then he hurried to the kitchen and brewed a potion that for evil smell was wicked enough to cure anything on earth, or under the earth. This was poured down Sue’s throat and by morning she was all right again.

But not so Natalie’s garden! First thing, after getting out doors before breakfast, Natalie ran to inspect the damages done by Sue. But the sight was more overwhelming than she had thought for.

“Oh, oh, OH!” she screamed, wringing her hands in despair.

All within hearing of that shriek ran to comfort her.

“Just look at what that terrible cow did to my beauties!” cried Natalie, pointing at several tomato vines which were broken off short at the soil and lay wilting. Many cabbages were partly chewed off their stems, and a number of kohl-rabi and turnips were cut off short like the tomato vines, and were drying in the sun.

When Mrs. James ran to join the distressed girls, she examined the drying plants and then said: “Sue didn’t do all this, Natalie. A cut-worm has gone through your garden during the night. Perhaps the flashlight attracted him here and then he did his damage.”

“But Sue ate the cabbages!” was Natalie’s only satisfaction.

“Yes, and the Corporation must pay for them,” said Mrs. James.

All but Janet and Natalie went slowly back to the house, then the former said consolingly: “Nat, I’ll pay for those poor vines and plants, because I can feed them to my pigs and save on the feed.”

But Natalie would not hear of Janet’s paying for them. “I’ve sacrificed so much, Jan, that I may as well sacrifice all!” sighed she, in a voice that sounded as if all on earth was lost.

Janet gathered up the greens and carried them to the pig pen where she threw them in for breakfast. Then, as long as she was there, she gave the happy little fellows their usual rations of corn and other feed, planning to save expense on the milk that morning.

Immediately after breakfast Frances invited Janet to go with her in the car for the new lawn mower and the mail. So the two girls drove away. Sam was not aware that the pigs had been fed and he prepared the usual liberal breakfast of skim milk and meal. At the pen he shoved the dish through the fence, and went to measure out the grain and other feed for them.

The names of the other two pigs were David and Jonathan because they seemed so fond of each other, but Seizer who always managed to get most of the food given for the three of them, now ate a double share of the breakfast provided by Sam. He already had eaten two-thirds of the greens and food given by Janet.

While at the store, Mrs. Tompkins said she expected her bees to swarm that day, and asked the girls if they wanted to buy another hive. Frances said she would hurry home and ask the others. Consequently, the house scouts were so interested in watching the second swarm captured and hived for them, that no one gave a thought to the live stock of the farm. Even the corporation cow was forgotten until after the bee-hive was placed beside the first one.

Janet remembered the chickens, and went to gather any eggs laid since the previous noon. In passing the pig pen on her way to the chicken coop, she stopped to call to the pigs. To her shocked horror she saw Seizer stiffened out near the trough, with his four little hoofs straight out before him. His body was horribly distended and his tongue was discolored and hanging out of his mouth.

Janet tore back to the house, crying loudly all the way. By the time she reached the kitchen stoop every one was running to find out what new calamity had fallen upon the heads of the scouts.

“My darling Seizer! Oh, my wonderful little Seizer! I used to think him a glutton because he ate his own and his brothers’ share of feed, but now that he’s dead, I wish I had never said a word against him! Poor little Seizer!” wailed Janet, rocking back and forth.

“What’s the matter? Is Seizer dead?” gasped the girls.

“Is de udder two all right?” asked Rachel, not thinking of the bomb she was throwing at Janet. The girl sprang up and was off like a shot for the barn yard.

She had not thought of the other two until Rachel spoke. But she found Sam in the pen trying to coax David and Jonathan out of bed. He looked up when Janet cried: “Are they dead?”

“Nah, but dey sure am sick, Mis Janet!”

“Run for Ames, Sam—oh bring him at once!” cried Janet.

Frances broke another record while driving for Ames, and that amateur veterinarian came back with her to prescribe for the two pigs. Then it was learned Janet fed the pigs the unhealthy tomato vines, as well as tops of turnips and other indigestible vegetable greens. And Sam had fed them liberally after they had had one hearty breakfast from Janet.

“It’s a wonder you didn’t kill all three of ’em,” was the farmer’s comment. “If the other two got as much as Seizer did you’d had a triple funeral.” Ames laughed at his pleasantry but picked up the dead pig by one fore-leg and handed him to Sam.

“Chuck it back of the barn and cover it with manure.”

“Oh, oh! How cruel of you! I could never rest in my own grave if I ever thought of such things as that!” cried Janet, with scathing emphasis on the “I” for Ames’s especial benefit.

But the farmer laughed heartily and called her “whimsy.”

A deep grave was dug for Seizer under the sour apple tree and all the scouts who had been notified of the calamity, threw daisies and buttercups upon the box that held the last of the pig.

But a queer sound from Sue, who was again pasturing in the field, caused all the girls to run and see what was wrong. Then they learned that Sue liked the luscious grass near the fence where the bee-hives stood and the bees objecting to this trespass, would alight on and sting her. When they happened to sting on a tender spot she kicked and galloped about with the sudden pain.

“Dat’s what ailed her when she jumped the fence and got into Natalie’s garden!” was Sam’s inspired explanation of that other mystery.

After that, Sue was taken to the far side of the field and staked there to graze without any interference from the bees.

But the scouts have now reached the middle of July, and there are so many, many things that happened after Seizer’s demise, that it will need another book to tell you of further experiences on Green Hill Farm. The third volume of the Girl Scout’s Country Life is called “Norma: A Flower Scout.”

The End.

Transcriber’s Notes

1. Table of Contents has been added by the Transcriber.

2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.

3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

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Table of Contents

JANET: A STOCK-FARM SCOUT

CHAPTER I—JANET’S ARRIVAL AT GREEN HILL

CHAPTER II—JANET TRIES CARPENTRY

CHAPTER III—TRIALS OF A STOCK-FARMER

CHAPTER IV—TENDERFOOT SCOUTS OF SOLOMON’S SEAL TROOP

CHAPTER V—THE POULTRY GO ON STRIKE

CHAPTER VI—JANET RECEIVES ENCOURAGEMENT

CHAPTER VII—THE FORTUNE IN KEEPING A COW

CHAPTER VIII—AN ANIMAL HUNT

CHAPTER IX—TELLS OF BEES AND BUGS

CHAPTER X—JANET ADDS TO HER STOCK FAMILY

CHAPTER XI—BREAKING THE TENTH COMMANDMENT

CHAPTER XII—SUSY’S COMPLAINT

CHAPTER XIII—FRANCES REBELS

CHAPTER XIV—SORROWS OF A STOCK SCOUT

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