“They can silence any steam siren from the factories in New York, or across the River,” laughed Janet.
“Well, I’m off for my garden. I don’t envy you working to such an accompaniment of harmony,” giggled Natalie, skipping away.
Janet now went to the loft of the barn to seek such lumber as would answer for the building of the pen. But she found that most of it was too heavy and cumbersome, or very frail and light. The pig pen and chicken coops had to be ready, however, so she took as many old lath and discarded shingles as she could carry, and heaped them beside the broken down pen that had given years of service to the last tenant of the farm.
Janet stood planning what was the first step to take in building a pig pen. As she was a bright girl, she decided to examine the methods used in building the nearby cow shed. So she went over and found it was necessary to use posts to form solid supports to which the crossboards could be nailed.
“That means I’ll have to hunt up some sort of stuff to do for posts,” murmured Janet, as she returned to the barn for the quest.
But she saw nothing that would answer her need, so she left the barn and sought anxiously back of the sheds in the piled up discard of old posts, boards and broken sash frames and trim. Finally she selected seven badly decayed posts which had been removed from the road line years before when the former tenant of the farm had nailed the wire fencing to the cherry trees, as Farmer Ames explained in Natalie’s Garden Book.
“Well, they’re posts, anyway!” declared Janet to herself, dragging as many as she could move over to the new location for the pig pen.
The best post was used first. Janet held it up on the line she proposed to build upon, but she discovered that the timber would not stand without a support.
“What now?” thought she, glancing around for an inspiration.
Then she comprehended what was lacking. “Oh, I see! One has to dig holes and plant the posts, first!”