Ethel Morton at Sweetbrier Lodge

E-text prepared by Stephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
By MABELL S. C. SMITH
THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING COMPANY Cleveland, Ohio New York, N. Y.
Printed in the United States of America
“Carefully! O, do be careful, Ethel Brown! I’m so afraid I’ll drop one of them!”
It was Ethel Blue Morton speaking to her cousin, who was helping her and their other cousin, Dorothy Smith, take Dicky Morton’s newly hatched chickens out of the incubator and put them into the brooder.
“I have dropped one,” exclaimed Dorothy. “Poor little dinky thing! It didn’t hurt it a bit, though. See, it’s running about as chipper as ever.”
“Are you counting ’em?” demanded Dicky, whose small hands were better suited than those of the girls for making the transfer that was to establish the chicks in their new habitation.
“Yes,” answered all three in chorus.
“Here’s one with a twisted leg. He must have fallen off the tray when he was first hatched.” cried Ethel Brown.
“He lookth pretty well. I gueth he’ll live if I feed him by himthelf tho the throng ones won’t crowd him away from the feed panth,” said Dicky, examining the cripple, for in spite of his small supply of seven years he had learned from his big brother Roger and from his grandfather Emerson a great deal about the use of an incubator and the care of young chickens.
“That’s a good hatch for this time of year,” Ethel Brown announced when she added together the numbers which each handler reported to her. “A hundred and thirty-seven.”