They all listened, smiling at the note of contentment that buzzed gently from the greedy groups of crowding chicks. As the oatmeal disappeared the chickens looked about them for shelter and discovered the strips of cloth that did duty for the maternal wings. Rushing beneath them they cuddled side by side in the covered part of the brooder.
“Look at that one tucking his head under his wing like a grown-up hen!” exclaimed Ethel Blue.
“I’ll have to turn the lamp up a little higher tho they won’t crowd and hurt each other,” Dicky decided.
“I’d wait a minute until they begin to warm the whole of their house by the warmth from their bodies,” urged Ethel Brown, and her brother agreed that there was no need of haste, but he watched them closely until he saw that they were not trampling on each other’s backs or sitting down hard on each other’s heads.
“When will they come out again?” asked Dorothy, who had never seen an incubator and brooder in operation before and who was immensely interested.
“When they are hungry.”
“How soon will that be?”
“In about two hours. They’re a good deal like babies.”
“And is this brooder a really good step-mother?”
“It’s a foster-mother,” corrected Ethel Blue. “It isn’t anything so horrid as a step-mother.”