mit that she had been careless.

It all happened exactly as Mrs. Willis had said. Mr. Hildreth was
sitting on his porch, smoking comfortably and resting after a hard day.
He was surprised to see Sarah, but he did not yell at her. Instead he
listened silently while she stammered out that she had been to blame
for the hens feasting in the bins. She told him about the sick hen and
she outlined her eventful day, culminating in the tumble from the apple
tree and Richard's attempt to render first aid in the washroom.

"Well," Mr. Hildreth spoke for the first time, when she had finished.
"Well, I'm glad you came to me and told me--though that's the natural
thing to do. Own up when you're wrong--isn't it?"

"Is it?" asked Sarah doubtfully.

"Only square thing to do," the farmer assured her. "I'll tell Warren
before I turn in to-night, then we'll be above board all around. You
like animals, don't you?" he added suddenly.

"When I grow up," she announced, "I'm not going to do a thing but take
care of animals. I'm going to have a farm, like yours, Mr. Hildreth,
and I'm going to have seven automobiles with men to drive 'em. They'll
go through all the cities and take the poor sick horses and dogs and
cats and--and birds and things and bring 'em back to my farm. Then
I'll doctor them up and cure them."

"So you think you'll be a doctor, hey?" said the farmer lazily.

"An animal doctor," Sarah affirmed. "I won't take care of sick folks,
'cause they're cross; Shirley is going to be that kind of a doctor
maybe. Animals are never cross, no matter how sick they are. Did you
know that, Mr. Hildreth?"

"Come to think of it, I do," Mr. Hildreth admitted, enjoying the
conversation immensely. "But where'll you get money to run this farm,
Sarah? Don't you think you ought to raise some crops?"

Sarah pondered.

"Rich and Warren can do that," she decided easily. "They'll be through
agricultural college by then and perhaps they'll like to run my farm.
But Warren will have to buy a tractor, because I won't let my horses
plow. None of the animals are going to work, when I take care of them."

Mr. Hildreth glanced at her queerly.

"You're just like the rest," he said grimly. "You think of work as
something to side-step, don't you? Let me tell you, Sarah, that unless
you give these animal friends of yours something to do and train them
to do it regularly, you will have to spend all your days dosing them."

"You mean th