"We didn't get it off," said Edith; "that's why we got you here. Ruth tried to shake it off, but his nose bled terribly. He was sitting on a pile of sand holding on to the turtle when I left," she replied.
When they reached the pit they found that the desperate Scotchman, in his struggling to free himself from the turtle, had pulled a large piece out of the end of his nose. Ruth, after first putting her turtle in a water barrel, was doing her best to stop the flow of blood and comfort the still swearing Scotchman, whose feelings were becoming more aggravated each minute by Ruth's uproarious laughter.
"If a girl comes around here again dressed up in boy's clothes, carrying a turtle, I'll throw them both into the pond and drown them," he declared savagely, as he got up from the sand pile and started for his home. When he had disappeared, Bob and the two girls sat down on the sand pile and laughed until they cried.
XVII
FILLING THE INCUBATOR
Shortly after the new stock had been delivered at Brookside Farm, Bob and his aunt put the new Leghorn chickens in the old sheep shed back of the barn, and the white Plymouth Rocks in a small pen near the cider mill, so as to keep the two flocks apart. They saved all the eggs from each flock and as fast as the common hens on the farm showed a disposition to set, the eggs were supplied to them, until the incubator house was finished.
The incubator was a modern machine of five hundred egg capacity. After a conference, they decided to send to two well-known poultry farms specializing in white Leghorns and white Plymouth Rocks for additional settings of eggs, in order to have new blood for the next year. They got fifty eggs of each breed from the two breeders, making two hundred eggs in all, and took three hundred eggs from their own stock. A careful record of the different eggs was made, so they could keep the chicks separate after they were hatched.
Before the eggs arrived, the incubator was cleaned and tested.
"Won't you let me help you with the eggs, Bob?" asked Edith, as he was getting ready to place the eggs in the incubator. "I've been reading a lot in the bulletins about chickens, and I would like to help you look after them."
"I don't think it would be such a hard job, Edith," he replied, "if you understand how to regulate the heat and keep the eggs turned. Of course, it will be necessary to look after them carefully."