Unthinkingly, Janet climbed up by one of the corner posts and before she could reach the top slat in the fence, the whole structure fell over throwing her full length in the pen. The pigs were so frightened that they sought the shelter of the little shed and there huddled silently.
“Quick! Quick, Natalie!” called Mrs. James, seeing that the inevitable would happen if once the little pigs escaped from the pen. “Get me the box we used for a sawbuck—I’ll shut the pigs in the shed by standing the box against the door.”
Natalie ran for the box while Janet managed to get upon her feet again and try from within the pen to bolster up the fence. She managed to prop up the post but the weight of the boards made it sag hopelessly. Meantime, the box was used to close up the entrance of the shed and kept the pigs inside.
“It’s too late to work longer on this fence,” said Mrs. James. “The pigs are all right for the night, and we’ll repair the fence in the morning. But you must go to the house and prepare the corn meal and milk for them or they’ll squeal all through the night.”
Natalie and Janet eagerly cooked the mush and carried it back to the pigs, then gave them a fresh drink of water and left them. Janet suddenly stopped and gasped.
“Now what’s wrong?” cried Natalie, also stopping to gaze questioningly at her friend.
“The chickens, Nat!” was the hardly audible reply.
“Oh, the chickens!” added Natalie. “Where can they be?”
“I hope they have not lost themselves. I’ll never be able to collect them all again, if one went here and another there,” wailed Janet, then added as an afterthought: “And all my monthly allowance will be lost with them!”
But an encouraging cluck, sounding from the grass plot near the house, now cheered the two girls and they hurried there to find the chickens—big and little—eagerly picking up the scraps of food from the grass where Rachel had tossed them for the wild birds.