“Why, I won’t do anything with them, I’ll just build a new house and pen. Jimmy thinks this one will prove to be too weak, anyway, as soon as the pigs grow big and strong.”
“How long before that will be?” asked Norma wonderingly.
“It won’t be long now that I have started a regular course of feeding. This morning I gave them a lot of greens from Nat’s garden—the ones my hens scratched up, you know. Then I fed them enough corn and other stuff to satisfy them for once. I’ve made up my mind to overfeed rather than underfeed them, hereafter.”
“Well, I think the plan of moving the pig pen is best as long as you say you will need a stronger house and fence in the near future,” was Norma’s careful judgment.
“That’s what I think! Let’s go and ask Jimmy what she says about it. I’m most anxious to give them a regular bathing pool, and if she thinks a pen near the brook will be all right, I’m going to start it at once,” declared Janet.
But Mrs. James vetoed the plan of having the pen on the banks of the brook for several reasons, the principle one being: “The pigs, when they are larger, will root in the water and burrow a hole under the fence and get out by way of the brook. You will be in constant race to catch them again. But you might run an iron pipe from our water falls down to a site nearer the falls than the present pen is. That will furnish all the water you will need in a pool. Or you can attach a hose to the old hydrant in the barn yard and fill a concrete pool that way.”
“Is the grass all cut, Norma,” continued Mrs. James, turning to the girl.
“Oh, no! Rachel says it is much too long to run the mower through. I tried it but it wouldn’t budge. Rachel says it needs a scythe and a strong man to cut it down now as it is almost hay.”
Mrs. James smiled but said nothing, so the girls looked over the work that Ames and Sam had accomplished since morning. As they remarked at the amount of bog and muck that had been taken up out of the hollow, Mrs. James added:
“Yes, and you girls can mix it with the cow manure if you have nothing else to do. I was about to go for the wheel-barrow and bring a load of the compost to the first little heap of muck.”