“Then you drive ’em off!” begged Jan. “I don’t like it here! I wish we hadn’t come! Oh, they’ll knock us down if they’re not careful!”
The sheep were crowding more closely than ever about the children. Perhaps the woolly animals meant no harm, and were only wondering what the Curlytops were doing in the pasture. But the sheep certainly did crowd too much, and Jan and Ted had all they could do to save themselves from being pushed over. They tried to keep Trouble between them, for Baby William was much frightened.
“Whose sheep are they?” asked Jan, as she tried to walk out from the flock toward the fence. “They weren’t here the other day.”
“I guess they belong to the man who owns the farm next to Grandpa Martin’s,” said Teddy. “They weren’t here before, or Hal wouldn’t have crossed this field. Go on away! Get back there!” Ted suddenly cried, as he saw the big ram pushing aside the sheep in the outer ring, as though he wanted to get in himself closer to the children.
Ted found a stone on the ground near his feet, and, picking it up, threw at the ram. The stone struck the animal on his big, curved horns, and bounced off, not hurting him any, and not scaring him, which was what Ted wanted to do.
“Do sheep ever bite?” whispered Jan, as she got closer to her brother.
“No!” he said, more to make his sister feel less afraid, than because he was sure they did not. “Anyhow, they don’t bite very hard.”
“Well, I don’t like even little bites,” returned Janet.
“I won’t let ’em bite you at all,” promised Ted, though how he was going to stop the sheep from doing this, especially the ram with his big horns, the Curlytop boy did not quite know. And, as he looked at those horns, he was sure a blow from them would be worse than a bite.
“They’re bigger than Nicknack’s,” thought Ted.