“I believe they’re hungry!” she exclaimed. “Clover, I don’t believe they’ve been fed or watered for several days! They wouldn’t act like this if they had.”
There wasn’t a drop of water anywhere in or about the barn, and a hasty investigation of the pig troughs and the drinking vessels in the chicken yard showed the same state of affairs.
“I don’t know how much to feed you,” Betty told the suffering animals compassionately, “but at any rate I know what to feed you. And you shall have some water as fast as I can pump it.”
She was thankful for the weeks spent at Bramble Farm as she set about her heavy tasks. She was tired from her long ride and the excitement of the morning, but it never entered her head to go away and leave the neglected farm stock. There was no other house within sight where she could go for help, and if the animals were fed and watered that day it was evidently up to her to do it.
She worked valiantly, heaping the horses’ mangers with hay, carrying cornstalks to the cows and feeding the ravenous pigs and chickens corn on the cob, for there was no time to run the sheller. She had some difficulty in discovering the supplies, and then, when all were served, she discovered that not one of the animals had touched the food.
“Too thirsty,” she commented wisely.
Watering them was hard, tiresome work, for one big tub in the center of the yard evidently served the whole barn. When she had pumped that full—and how her arms ached!—she led the horses out, and after them, the cows. She was afraid to let either horses or cows have all they wanted, and jerking them back to their stalls before they had finished was not easy. She carried pailful after pailful of water to the pigs and the chickens and it was late in the afternoon before she had the satisfaction of knowing that every animal, if not content, was much more comfortable than before her arrival.
“Now I think I’ve earned something to eat!” she confided to Clover, when, hot and tired and flushed with the heat, she had filled the last chicken yard pan. “And I’m going up to the house and help myself from the pantry. I’m ’most sure the kitchen door is unlocked; no one around here ever locks the back door.”
She was very hungry by this time, having had nothing since an early breakfast, and she had no scruples about helping herself to whatever edibles she might find.
“I begin to sympathize with all the hired men,” she thought, making her way to the kitchen door. “I don’t wonder they eat huge meals when they have to do such hard work.”