THE HEN.
| bas´-ket | watch | ban´-tams | greed´-y |
| fetch | thought | know | gray |
| friends | charge | proud | swal´-lowed |
| fowls | pair | peck´-ing | laughed |
1. The day after Dora and Harry came home, their mother gave them a basket and sent them up to the farm to fetch eggs.
2. Rover went with them, and all three were glad to go, for they had many friends at the farm.
3. There was the great dog, Watch, and there were the cart-horses and the pony, the ducks and the fowls. And there were five girls and boys—Mary, Tom, Johnny, Annie, and Kate.
4. When these five, and Watch, saw Harry, Dora, and Rover coming, they ran down the lane to meet them. They were soon all in the farm-yard, talking as fast as they could talk.
5. Two had to tell about their visit to Needle-town, and five about the doings at the farm, so it was some time before the eggs were thought of.
6. Mary had charge of the eggs, and went every morning to look for new ones.
'Since you went away,' she said, 'I have had a pair of bantams given me, for my very own. Here they are!'
'What little things! and how very pretty!' cried Dora. 'Do they know you, Mary?'
7. 'Yes; I feed them every day. Here comes the big black hen. She has been laying an egg. See how proud she is! She calls out in that way to let the rest know what she has done.'
8. 'Now she is pecking about for food,' said Harry.
Tom said that fowls were always eating.
'They are greedy things,' said Kate.
9. 'Oh, look at this gray hen!' said Harry, 'she picked up a bit of stone just now and ate it! Does she know no better?'
10. 'It is not for food,' Mary told him; 'she takes it to grind up the hard seeds she has swallowed. They all go into a strong little bag, and the stones rub and press on the seeds.'
11. 'I never heard of such a thing! She keeps a mill inside to grind her food!'
12. The others laughed, and then Mary went in to get some eggs. After the basket was filled, the two children said good-bye to their friends, and went home.
THE SPARROW.
| shoots | thou´-sand | beaks | clean |
| spar´-rows | ba´-bies | ap´-ple | thirst´-y |
| steal | build | blos´-som | wheat |
| fruit | spoil | fruit | throw |
1. 'Mother,' cried Harry, running in one day, 'Jack Denny says he shoots sparrows!'
'I am very sorry to hear it. Why does he shoot them?'
'"They steal fruit and corn," he says. He wanted me to throw stones at them!'
2. 'Well, you can tell him about some silly men who killed the sparrows and other birds, and the next year their fruit and corn were eaten up by grubs. Even the leaves on the trees were eaten.'
3. 'Is this true?'
'Quite true. They had to send for little birds from other places to live in their fields and gardens. Do you know that a sparrow kills four thousand grubs in one day when her babies are in the nest?
4. 'One wise man who grows fruit says that his best friends are the sparrows, and he makes holes in the garden-walls for them to build in. Their sharp eyes see the tiny things that would spoil the fruit, and their sharp beaks nip them up at once.
5. 'He loves to see sparrows in an apple-tree in blossom-time; he knows they are saving the apples for him.'
'But Jack says he has seen them pecking at fruit.'
6. 'Yes, they like fruit, just as you and I do. But there would be no fruit at all, if the birds did not eat the grubs.
7. 'The man I was telling you about puts nets over his trees when the fruit begins to ripen. And I heard only the other day that it is a good plan to put pans of clean fresh water close to the trees and bushes. Then the birds will not go so often to the fruit. They are thirsty and hot, poor things!
8. 'And there would be no corn, if the birds did not kill the wheat-fly's grubs.'
9. When Harry heard all this, he made up his mind not to throw stones at the sparrows, as Jack wanted him to do.
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY.
| but´-ter-flies | flow´-ers | pleas´-ant | brook´-let |
| mer´-ry | o-bliged´ | cheese | crys´-tal |
| gath´-ered | roamed | hedge | thrush |
| broth´-er | scoured | ease | mus´-ic |
1. Where the bees and butterflies
Skim the grassy down,
Four merry little children
Gathered from the town;
2. Ragged little Johnnie,
And his brother Ben,
With wild-flowers are laden,
These merry little men.
Kate and Mat have posies
Of colours bright and gay,
For Tim, their tiny brother,
At home obliged to stay.
3. They have roamed the meadow,
They have scoured the wood,
Seeking nuts and blackberries,
For their pleasant food.
With their nuts and blackberries
And bits of bread and cheese,
On a mossy hedge-bank,
Now they take their ease.
4. Drinking from the brooklet
'Neath the hawthorn tree,
Clear it runs as crystal,
Fresh and bright and free.
And the thrush sings loudly
On the hawthorn spray,
And the brooklet ever
Makes music on its way.
SOME HERBS.
| stream | tea | pow´-der | pars´-ley |
| through | lett´-uce | sprin´-kled | thyme |
| grav´-el | tongue | flan´-nel | herbs |
| mar´-ket | mus´-tard | car´-ried | sage |
1. A little stream ran through one of the farmer's fields. The water was so clear that you could see the sand and gravel at the bottom, and in it there grew plenty of water-cress.
Water-cress.
2. Harry went one afternoon to help Johnny and Tom to pick it for market, and brought a big bunch home for tea.
3. His mother had picked a lettuce from the garden, and some mustard and cress, and they were all put on one plate.
'They bite my tongue,' said Dora, 'all but the lettuce. I like it best.'
4. 'And I like the biting,' said Harry. 'Why is this called mustard, mother?'
'Because the yellow mustard comes from it. The seeds are ground to powder.'
'And we eat the leaves. It is a useful plant.'
Lettuce.
5. After tea, mother took some cress-seed and mustard-seed out of two little packets. Then she cut up one or two corks, put them into a deep plate, filled it with water, and sprinkled seed on the cork.
6. 'This is for you, Harry,' she said. 'You will soon have a little crop of mustard and cress. And here is one for Dora!'
In Dora's plate she laid a bit of flannel, poured water on it, and sowed seed. The children carried off their plates to a safe place, and thought it would be fine fun to see roots and leaves come out of the tiny seeds.
7. Then mother called them into the garden to see her parsley. She told them that hares and rabbits would come a long way to feed on a parsley-bed if they could get at it.
8. Close by grew mint, sage, and thyme. 'All these are herbs,' she said. 'They are not like trees, are they?'
'No; they have no bark, no hard wood, and they are so small.'
Leaves of Mint, Parsley, Thyme, and Sage.
9. Dora picked a mint-leaf, a parsley-leaf, a thyme-leaf, and a sage-leaf, and laid them side by side. She wanted to see if they were like each other. But when she looked at them she found that they were not alike.
COFFEE.
| cof´-fee | win´-dow | rat´-tled | blos´-som |
| beans | bus´-y | coun´-try | cov´-ered |
| kneel´-ing | stock´-ings | cher´-ry | cloths |
| chair | ket´-tle | to-geth´-er | ber´-ries |
1. 'What is coffee, mother dear? Does it grow?'
2. It was Dora who asked this. She and Harry were putting away some things that had come from the shop, and she was now filling a tin with coffee-beans.
3. She was kneeling on a chair by the table in the window. Her mother was busy mending stockings, and the cat and the dog were both asleep. The kettle was singing, and all was cosy.
4. The coffee-beans rattled into the tin, and Dora picked one out and looked at it.
When Harry heard Dora asking about it, he also put his hand in and took a coffee-bean. It smelt very nice, he thought. So did Dora.
5. They found that it had a flat side and a round side.
'See, I can put the flat side of mine against the flat side of yours,' said Harry.
'They grew like that,' said mother.
'Oh, then, they did grow? They were alive once?'
Coffee branch with Berries.
6. 'Yes; they were seeds of a plant that grows in a warm country, far away from here. They once lived inside a berry.
'The berry was red like a cherry, and the seeds inside were held together in a little bag.'
7. 'There must have been a flower before the berry came,' said Harry, thinking of the pea-flower and its pod.
Coffee-flower.
Berry.
Seeds in Berry.
'A very pretty white flower,' said his mother. 'They say that a coffee-garden looks lovely in blossom-time, just as if it were all covered with snow.
8. 'In two or three days the snow-like blossoms are gone, and the fruit is left. When it is ripe, men put cloths under the trees, and shake it down.'
9. 'I wish I could go and help!' said Harry. 'What comes next?'
'They pick up the berries, dry them in the sun, and get the beans out. Then they send the beans over the sea in a ship. And here they are!'
Dora and Harry tearing up the old papers.