Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/148

Rh at home. And they know they'll get no food between times, so all day long they pick and scratch in the orchard, and destroy so many bugs and insects that it more than pays for the trouble of keeping them there."

"Doesn't this flock want to mix up with the other?" asked Miss Laura, as she stepped into the little wooden house.

"No; they seem to understand. I keep my eye on them for a while at first, and they soon find out that they're not to fly either over the garden fence or the orchard fence. They roam over the farm and pick up what they can get. There's a good deal of sense in hens, if one manages them properly. I love them, because they are such good mothers."

We were in the little wooden house, by this time, and I looked around it with surprise. It was better than some of the poor people's houses in Fairport. The walls were white and clean. So were the little ladders that led up to different kinds of roosts, where the fowls sat at night. Some roosts were thin and round, and some were broad and flat. Mrs. Wood said that the broad ones were for a heavy fowl called the Brahma. Every part of the little house was almost as light as it was out doors, on account of the large windows.

Miss Laura spoke of it. "Why, auntie, I never saw such a light hen house."

Mrs. Wood was diving into a partly shut-in place, where it was not so light, and where the nests were. She straightened herself up, her face redder than ever, and looked at the windows with a pleased smile.

"Yes, there's not a hen house in New Hampshire with such big windows. Whenever I look at them, I think of my mother's hens, and wish tha they could have had a