“What has happened, Jimmy?” cried a chorus of girlish voices anxiously.
Then Mrs. James sat down in the rocker and laughed immoderately. When she could speak she said: “Well, I’ve discovered the cause of that tannery odor!”
Natalie ran and opened the door and stuck her head out to see. Then she, too, came back and laughed. “We’ve got to close all the windows and doors in the house until Norma removes the trouble.”
“Me? What have I got to do with it?” was Norma’s astonishing retort.
“Farmer Ames unloaded a cartful of compost right under the windows on both sides of the house and along the front,” was the reply. “And it has to be removed without delay or we’ll have to sleep with closed windows the rest of the year.”
“We all will help Norma cover the stuff, or carry it to the garden,” suggested Mrs. James.
So all hands were busily employed for a time, thereafter, in taking the compost which Natalie needed for the garden, to the land alongside the fence, while Norma and her workers carried what she needed for the flower-beds and spaded it under in the soil.
Natalie discovered that the weeds were trying to get a hold in her garden so she remained working and weeding, after the fertilizer had been removed from the proximity of the windows.
Frances and Belle went to Four Corners for Rachel who had to have a dozen eggs for baking purposes, so Janet sauntered to her farmyard to see if she could not find one egg in the nests. When nothing but the china eggs were found in the nests, she stood glaring at the large clumsy hens. She clenched her teeth and muttered: “I should think you’d all be so glad to lay eggs for me, after all the money and time I’ve given you just so you could live at Green Hill.”
Then she went to the separate nest where the setting-hen was expected to hatch the eggs. The moment Janet came near her, however, the old hen flew from the nest and ran out into the yard. As she had acted this way before, Janet thought nothing of it, but she took advantage of these absences to examine the eggs. Today she picked up one of the eggs to look for the pecking that would foretell the coming of a chick, but no such sign was visible in the shell.