Rachel was bringing in the soup at this moment and overheard the reply. “Does yoh mean to say dem hens ain’t out of dose bags, yit?”
“No; Ames said it wouldn’t hurt them to wait while I build the coops. But he did say that the pigs must be removed from the crate or they will die. So I have to finish their pen first,” explained Janet.
“Den it will do dem hens good to run about and scratch a bit, Janet. All my fowl down Souf’ used to wander about. Dey lays better fer such exercises. Ef we opens dose bags inside the old henhouse and gets ’em acquainted wid surroundin’s, dey will come back to roost at night. Let ’em go about the place, says I, ’stead of baggin’ ’em up in Ames’s potato sacks,” advised Rachel.
As this was acceptable advice to Janet, and Mrs. James and Natalie seconded it, no time was lost after dinner in freeing the chickens from the feed bags. They were taken to the old chicken house and there released. Not only were the six Plymouth Rock hens and the highly colored cock glad to be free, but the eighteen little chicks showed their pleasure, too, by fluttering noisily about and scratching without further delay.
“Aren’t they wonderful birds!” sighed Janet, as she saw them all follow the rooster out of the run into the open barn yard back of the hen house.
“Yes,” added Natalie. “Now the place begins to really look like a farm, don’t you think so, Jimmy?”
“When we have that cow, and a calf that Janet wants, and other stock, we will realize it is a farm, not alone look like one,” laughed Mrs. James.
“Humph! I says dat when sech a time ’rives, it’ll be mos’ time fer my nephew, Sam, to jine us. Den it’ll need a man to help,” added Rachel, whose one great ambition was to find some need at Green Hill Farm whereby her orphaned Sambo would be called upon to hasten from the wicked city and devote his energies to farming.
Mrs. James inspected the fence Janet had worked so arduously upon that morning, but she had to hide a smile when she took hold of a post. “Will this pen soon be ready for the pigs, Janet?” she asked.
“I hope so, Jimmy,” sighed the carpenter.