“What were you doing?” asked Mary, still startled.
“Only whipping her breast with nettles, ma’am, to teach her to sit close in her nest, the plaguey thing, and not be gadding after the rest.”
“Poor thing!” cried Dora. “But oh, look, look, Mary, at the dear little chickens!”
They were in the greatest delight at the three broods of downy little chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate black legs at sight of Betty.
“Ay! he be always after me,” she said. “They terrify one terrible, as if ’twas their mother, till they can run with the rest.”
Dora would have petted the lamb, but it retreated from her behind Betty’s petticoats, and she could only listen to Mary’s questions about how much butter was made from how many cows milk, and then be taken to see the two calves, one of which Betty pronounced to be “but a staggering Bob yet, but George Butcher would take he in a sen’night,” which sounded so like senate, that it set Dora wondering what council was to pronounce on the fate of the poor infant bull.
Over his stall, Edmund found them, after an inspection of the pig-styes, and having much offended Master Pucklechurch by declaring that he would have them kept clean, and the pigs no longer allowed to range about the yard.
“Bless you, sir, the poor things would catch their death of cold and die,” was the answer to the one edict; and to the other, “They’d never take to their victuals, nor fat kindly without their range first.”
“Then let them have it in the home-field out there, where I see plenty of geese.”
“They’ll spile every bit of grass, sir,” was the growling objection; and still worse was the suggestion, which gradually rose into a command, that the “muck-heap” should be removed to the said home-field, and never allowed to accumulate in such close proximity to the house.