ey to Jilly's dialect," Marian
laughed--"she merely wanted you to go with her to see the chickens."

Chicken Little was enjoying her guests. Her resolve to help mother was
carried out only semi-occasionally when there were raspberries or
currants to be picked or peas to be shelled, under the grape arbor so
they wouldn't be in Annie's way in the kitchen. At first, Mrs. Morton
had counted on having the girls help with the breakfast dishes, but they
developed such a genius for disappearing immediately after breakfast
that she gave it up as more bother than it was worth.

They tramped and rode, and waded and splashed and finally swam, in the
bathing hole down at the creek, under Marian's or Alice's supervision,
till Katie and Gertie were brown and hearty.

"Mrs. Halford wouldn't know Gertie--she's fairly made over," Alice
observed one morning.

Gertie was fast losing her timidity and had so much persistence in
learning to ride that she bade fair to have a more graceful seat in the
saddle than Jane herself. Sherm was deep in farm work and the girls saw
little either of him or of Ernest, except in the evenings and on
Sundays. Dick ran the reaper in the harvest field for Dr. Morton for
three days, but his zeal waned as the weather got hotter.

"This is my vacation and I don't want to sweat my sweet self entirely
away 'in little drops of water.' Think how pained you'd be, dearest," he
told Alice.

"I never dreamed there was so much farming to a ranch," Alice remarked
to Dr. Morton one day. "I thought you attended to the cattle----"

"And rode around in chaps and sombreros, looking picturesque, the rest
of the time," interrupted Dick. "My precious wife is disappointed
because she hasn't seen any cowboys cavorting about the place shooting
each other up or gambling with nice picturesque bags of gold dust."

"Dick Harding! I didn't. But we'd hardly know there were any cattle
round if we didn't go through the pasture occasionally."

"Our big pastures take them off our hands pretty well in summer, but in
winter they have to be fed and herded and looked after generally, don't
they, Chicken Little? Humbug has played herd boy herself more than once.
You are thinking of the big cattle ranges in Colorado and Montana and
Wyoming, Alice. This country is cut up into farms and the ranges are
gone. And we have to raise our corn and wheat and rye, not to mention
fruits and vegetables. It's a busy life, but I love its independence."