Just then a farmer’s wagon came in sight, and as the automobile came opposite it, Janet shouted eagerly: “That’s the man! He sold us the lambs!”
“Why he ain’ the man I was talking of at all!” said Mr. Tompkins, chagrined at his mistake.
The farmer pulled in his horses and began, before the girls could scold him: “I found my man made a mistake, gals. He picked the wrong mother for them twins. I never knew it until I found the other mother feverish, and then I saw we had a wrong lamb for her. I got the right mother in a box in the wagon and I’ll carry my other mother home with me.”
As this explained the whole trouble satisfactorily, the exchange was soon made and the little twins were quickly snuggled by their right mother, while the starving little lamb back on the other farm would soon have its own mother again.
Then Janet explained how the ewe had butted the poor little lambs when they wanted to nurse from her and how they got the bottles ready to care for the hungry little dears.
The farmer laughed and said: “If you think the mother had a temper because she butted the lamb, you ought to see what the real mother of these twins did to my man when he tried to make her nurse the lamb that was left behind. He was stooping to draw the lamb over to her side when the old ewe lowered her head and in another moment the handy man was assisted over the fence!”
After the family reunion of lambs and ewe, the twins grew like weeds, and were able to run about the field after the mother and be weaned in two weeks’ time. But all this belongs to Frances’ book which follows this one.
A strict account was kept of Sue’s expenses and the income from the milk and butter and cheese, also the skim-milk which Janet bought for the pigs and calf, and at the end of the two weeks, dating from the Saturday the cow arrived at Green Hill, a corporate meeting was held to discuss dividends and future expenses of Sue. The profit showed such encouraging signs of growth that the girls began counting how long it would take to pay off the borrowed money with which they paid for Sue, and then begin to have something left to divide between the stockholders.
When Janet heard how much the skim-milk had cost her in the past two weeks, she gasped. “Why, Jimmy! If those pigs go on eating like this, the pork will be worth more than two dollars a pound when fall comes.”
The other girls laughed, and Natalie said: “Then you ought to feed David and Jonathan more of my tomato vines and let them follow in Seizer’s steps.”