ver, looked and smelt in some dismay, for the centre of
the yard was a mountain of manure and straw, with a puce-coloured pond
beside it. On the summit of the mountain a handsome ruddy cock, with a
splendid dark-green arched tail, clucked, chuckled, and scratched for
his speckled, rose-crowned hens, a green-headed, curly-tailed drake
"steered forth his fleet upon the lake" of brown ducks and their yellow
progeny, and pigs of the plum-pudding order rooted in the intermediate
regions. The road which led to the cart-sheds and to the house, skirted
round this unsavoury tract.

"Oh, Edmund!" sighed Mary.

"Farmer's wife, Mary," said her husband, smiling. "It ought to be a
perfect nosegay to you."

"I'm sure it is not wholesome," she said, looking really distressed, and
he dropped his teasing tone, and said--

"Of course it shall be remedied! I will see to it."

A dismal screeching and cackling here attracted the attention of the
sisters, who started towards Pucklechurch's cottage, and the fowl-house,
(a very foul house by the by) in front of which, on a low wooden stool,
sat a tidy old woman, Betty Pucklechurch in fact, in a tall muslin cap,
spotted kerchief blue gown, and coarse apron, with a big girl before her
holding the unfortunate hen, whose cries had startled them.

"Oh, don't go near! She is killing it," cried Dora.

"No;" as the hen, with a final squawk, shook out her ruffled feathers,
and rushed away to tell her woes to her companions on the dunghill,
while the old woman jumped up, smoothed down her apron, and curtsied
low.

"What were you doing?" asked Mary, still startled.

"Only whipping her breast with nettles, ma'am, to teach her to sit close
in her nest, the plaguey thing, and not be gadding after the rest."

"Poor thing!" cried Dora. "But oh, look, look, Mary, at the dear little
chickens!"

They were in the greatest delight at the three broods of downy little
chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in
coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a
basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate
black legs at sight of Betty.

"Ay! he be always after me," she said. "They terrify one terrible, as
if 'twas their mother, till they can run with the rest."

Dora would have petted the lamb, but it retreated from her, behind
Betty's petticoats, and she could only listen to Mary's questions about
how much butter was made fr