A WEEK later I tried my hand again at amusing the little ones, and this time I succeeded as well as I had failed before. We have all some fowls of our own, which, of course, we like better than any of the others, and take great pleasure in feeding.

Some time ago father gave us each a hen. Bob had a speckled Hamburgh, Marmaduke a pure white hen. with a top-knot, Winny a little bantam, and I had a guinea-hen.

These hens were all laying when father gave them to us, so we determined to let them sit, and see who had the largest brood of chicks. Bob's hen, which had sat on eleven eggs, hatched first, and brought out five chicks. This was very bad. Duke's came next with Winny's was the next,

eight; she had sat on nine eggs. and her little bantam hatched six eggs out of seven. Mine only hatched six out of nine. Duke was very glad that his hen had beaten all the others, but Bob did not at all like his only bringing out five little chicks when he had counted on having at least nine. We fed our chickens very often, and put them up so carefully at night that

it is no wonder we have not lost many of them. They are getting so big themselves now, that Duke and I are both hoping they will very soon begin to lay. He saw one of his, he says, looking for a nest the other day.

The mothers have had several broods since that first one; and although we have now many fowls between us, we know them all apart. The treat I had now made up my mind to give the children was to take them first to see the pigs, and then all over the poultry-yard, and let them feed turkeys, fowls, swans, ducks, geese, pigeons, rabbits—everything, in fact. The bantam had been sitting again three weeks to-day. I remembered this before we went out, so made at once for her nest. I knew that Winny would be delighted to have another brood. When we heard a little chirp, Winny clapped her hands with joy; and when I lifted the bantam off her nest, and in it were five of the sweetest little chicks we ever saw, Winny kissed her bantam. She is a splendid little mother! It was very good of her to hatch five again, for, as she is so small herself, we can never let her sit on more than seven eggs. We had now a very large poultry-yard, and ever so many young of every kind. A new brood of turkeys had come out yesterday, and Winny said it was so funny to see the big turkey-mother with her brood of "little big new fowl-chicks," as she called them. Very often we put turkeys' eggs under fowl-mothers that we know it won't hurt to sit an extra week, for we find they hatch more broods and raise them much better than the turkey-mothers; so perhaps Winny had not noticed little turkey-chicks with their own mothers before. Last

year our turkeys were altogether a failure, but this year all the poultry have done well. We haven't had much thunder yet-I suppose that's the reason. One difficulty with turkeys is that they will so seldom sit in their house. They choose some quiet spot under a hedge or bush, and there make their nests. When they do this, the sheep-dogs sometimes find and eat the eggs. Nep knows better than to do such a wicked thing.

When we fed the turkeys, Winny said the largest turkey-cock was much too proud. Every time we looked at him, he made himself as grand as he could, stuck up his beautiful tail till it was just like a big fan, and then dragged his wing-feathers along the ground.

But we had most amusement, that treat afternoon for the little ones, at the swan and duck pond. Ducks, Bob and I always say, haven't half the sense with their young that fowls have, for somehow they do not seem to call them properly; but this day a duck did a very odd thing. We had several ducks sitting, but I had thought so much of Winny's little bantam, that I had quite forgotten a brood of ducklings was also due to-day.

Marmaduke likes ducks as well as anything, he says, and thinks they look such funny, yellow-velvety things, waddling after their old mothers. The to-day's brood of thirteen little ones seemed very strong, and as they had been hatched early in the morning, some even in the night, and the weather was very hot, they were not kept away from the pond as they are sometimes, and we were in time to see their first swim.

"Oh, look, Bunchy!" Duke called out, as he pointed to the brood waddling after the old duck to the water

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side; "there's a little chick got amongst them. It must have made a mistake, and lost its right mother."

It was a little black thing, and when I looked well at it, I saw that it did not belong to any of our hens, and had been hatched quite lately. A hen must have laid an egg in the duck's nest, when she was off it feeding, about a week after she had begun to sit, and the duck had hatched it with her own; now it was following, with the little ducklings, down to the duck

pond. The chick was nearest to the mother, because it could run quicker than the ducklings could waddle; but when it arrived at the water, and saw the others glide into it, it stood at the edge chirping very, very sadly. The mother came back, and tried to entice it in.

Winny began to cry, because she thought the little chick would be drowned, and wanted to pick it up; but Marmaduke said she was to let it alone, and see what it would do. At last, when the duck was near

enough, the little chick made a sort of fly on to its mother's back, and the duck swam off with it perched there. The little chick did not seem to like its sail very much, and stood right in the middle of the old duck's back; and if the water wetted its feet ever so little, it made small jumps into the air and back again.

Duke screamed with laughter; but as little ducklings are weak the first day after being hatched, they and their mother stopped only a very short time in the water, and the chick was brought back to land quite safely.

We settled to take the little chick away from its duck-mother, and give it to a hen to bring up; and this was how we carried out our plan: When the young fowls and ducks were all put up for the night, we took this chick from under the duck, and put it under a hen who had a brood of chicks two days old.

The hen was and the next day the little chick, whose first mother we were afraid, if we had left it with her, might take it for a sail on her back every day, and at last drown it, was following its new mother about quite bravely, and looking much more at home, although its present brothers and sisters. were rather older, and stronger, than itself.

too sleepy to notice what we were doing;

There was so much to do and see that afternoon. I do not think any child could be dull who lived at a farm, if she were only allowed to do as she liked. We fed the geese after the ducks, and then the pigeons. These are quite tame, and Winny has a dear little pigeon of her own that seems quite to know her, because she is always saving something or other, to give it to eat.