Ethel Morton at Sweetbrier Lodge.

by Mabell S. C. Smith.

CHAPTER I

A NEW CRAFT

"Carefully! O, do be careful, Ethel Brown! I'm so afraid I'll drop one of them!"

It was Ethel Blue Morton speaking to her cousin, who was helping her and their other cousin, Dorothy Smith, take d.i.c.ky Morton's newly hatched chickens out of the incubator and put them into the brooder.

"I _have_ dropped one," exclaimed Dorothy. "Poor little d.i.n.ky thing! It didn't hurt it a bit, though. See, it's running about as chipper as ever."

"Are you counting 'em?" demanded d.i.c.ky, whose small hands were better suited than those of the girls for making the transfer that was to establish the chicks in their new habitation.

"Yes," answered all three in chorus.

"Here's one with a twisted leg. He must have fallen off the tray when he was first hatched." cried Ethel Brown.

"He lookth pretty well. I gueth he'll live if I feed him by himthelf tho the throng ones won't crowd him away from the feed panth," said d.i.c.ky, examining the cripple, for in spite of his small supply of seven years he had learned from his big brother Roger and from his grandfather Emerson a great deal about the use of an incubator and the care of young chickens.

"That's a good hatch for this time of year," Ethel Brown announced when she added together the numbers which each handler reported to her. "A hundred and thirty-seven."

"Hear their little beaks tapping the wooden floor," Ethel Blue said, calling their attention to the behavior of the just-installed little fowls who were making themselves entirely at home with extraordinary promptness.

"They take naturally to oatmeal flakes, don't they?" commented Dorothy.

"I always thought the old hen taught the chicks to scratch, and there's a little chap scratching as vigorously as if he had been taking lessons ever since he was born."

"They don't need lessons. Scratching is as natural as eating to them.

Hear them hum?"

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," d.i.c.ky 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."

"O, I don't think step-mothers are horrid," objected Dorothy.

"Yeth, they are," insisted d.i.c.ky. "All the fairy stories say they're cruel."

"O, fairy stories," sniffed Dorothy.

"I imagine fairy stories are right about step-mothers," insisted Ethel Blue.

"Did you ever know one?" asked Dorothy.

"No, I never did; but I have a feeling that they couldn't love a child that wasn't their own."

"Why not?" demanded Ethel Brown. "Mother loves you just as well as she does her own children and you're only her niece."

"Not her own niece, either--Uncle Roger's niece," corrected Ethel Blue; "but then, Aunt Marion is a darling."

"I don't see why a step-mother shouldn't be a darling."

"I don't see why she shouldn't be but I don't believe she ever is," and Ethel Blue stuck to her opinion.

"Well, there aren't any 'steps' around this family, so we can't tell by our own experience," cried Dorothy, "and we've got this chicken family moved into its new house, so let's go and see what the workmen are doing at our new house."

Dorothy's mother had been planning for several months to build a house on a lot of land on the same street that they were living on now, but farther away from the Mortons' and nearer the farm where lived the Mortons' grandfather and grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. The contractor had been at work only a few days.

"He had just finished staking off the ground when I was there the other afternoon," said Ethel Brown.

"He's way ahead of that now," Dorothy reported as they walked on, three abreast across the sidewalk, their blue serge suits all alike, their Tipperary hats set at the same angle on their heads, and only the different colors of their eyes and hair distinguishing them to a careless observer. "He told me yesterday that the whole cellar would be dug by this afternoon and they would be beginning to put in the concrete wall."

"Where?"

"The cellar wall."

"I thought cellar walls were made of stone."

"Sometimes they are, but when there isn't stone all cut, concrete is more convenient and cheaper, too."

"And it lasts forever, I was reading the other day."

"I should say it did. Those old Pyramids in Egypt are partly made of concrete, they think, and they are three or four thousand years old."

"Does Aunt Louise expect her house to last three or four thousand years?"

"She wants it durable; and fireproof, any way, because we're some distance from the engine house."