and dark with age. Dogs and cats
walked in and out at their pleasure, and though Mrs Solace sometimes
chased them all out for a few minutes, they soon returned again through
windows and doors, and made themselves quite at home. Mrs Solace was
too busy to trouble herself much about them, and also too good-natured,
so that the animals knew they could do pretty well as they liked.

It was this complete freedom that made the Manor Farm so delightful to
Dennis and Maisie, who ran in and out very much as the cats and dogs
did, and always found something to interest and amuse them. If Mrs
Solace were too much occupied in dairy, laundry, or store-room to give
them her attention, they had only to go into the farm-yard to be
surrounded by friends and acquaintances. Some of these, it is true,
disappeared from time to time, but you had hardly missed them before
there was something new to take their place. The great brown
cart-horses, at any rate, were always to be found after their work, and
always ready to bow their huge heads and take apples or sugar gently
with their soft lips. And in summer it was pleasant to be there just at
milking time, and watch the cows saunter slowly home across the fields,
to stand in a long patient row in the shed, to be milked.

Indeed it would be hard to say what time was not pleasant at the farm,
for in such a large family of creatures there was always something
happening of the very deepest interest to the children. In the spring
they were quite as anxious and eager about successful broods of early
ducklings, or the rearing of the turkeys as Mrs Solace was herself, and
she was secure of their heartfelt sympathy when the fox made away with
her poultry.

For unlike Mrs Broadbent, Mrs Solace not only knew all about such
matters, but liked nothing so well as to talk of them.

"When I'm a man," Dennis would say, "I mean to be a farmer."

"So do I," Maisie would answer.

"You couldn't be," Dennis would argue. "How could you go rook-shooting?
You know you scream when a gun goes off; and besides, you're afraid of
the turkey-cock."

"Well, then," Maisie would conclude, deeply conscious that both these
facts were true, "I'll be a farmer's wife, and rear turkeys; that's
quite as hard as shooting rooks, and much usefuller."

"That it is, dearie," Mrs Solace would agree, with her comfortable
laugh. "Puley pingling things they are, and want as much care as
children."

But apart from the animal