the
sky. A whole flight of lapwings rose, screaming "peewit", from a field
where they were feeding in company with a flock of seagulls, following
the plough that a labourer was driving through the rich red earth. On
a sheltered wall a lizard lay basking in the sunshine; and Linda very
nearly caught him, but he whisked away in a moment, and was gone down
a hole among the stones before half the class had seen him. There were
lambs frisking about in the meadows, and as the girls passed through a
farmyard they found a woman sitting on a doorstep feeding one from a
bottle, like a baby. It had lost its mother, so she told them, and had
readily accepted her as its nurse, becoming so tame that it followed
her everywhere about the house, and slept in a corner of the kitchen.

"We had to feed one of our puppies at home like that," said Linda. "We
used a tiny doll's bottle, and it was such fun to mix the milk and
warm water, and taste it first to see if it was sweet enough. I always
loved Jill much the best, but we couldn't rear her. Oswald was silly
enough to give her a bath when she was too young; I don't think he
dried her properly, and she took cold and died. That's generally the
way with one's pets," she added with a sigh.

"So it is," said Marian. "A most dreadful thing happened to Gwennie
and me. We had a lovely black rabbit, and Mother said we had better
not keep it when we went to school, because the little ones couldn't
look after it properly, and she wouldn't have time herself. A man in
the village asked if he might buy it from us, and we thought he wanted
it as a pet for his children, so we sold it to him. Then one day I met
him on the road, and he said: 'Oh, Missie, that rabbit of yours was a
good one! It made us two whole dinners, and a basin of broth as well.'
We had never dreamt he meant to kill it, and we were so horribly
sorry."

"Canaries are the worst," said Connie. "I've had three. I hung the
first outside the nursery window, and the nail gave way, and the poor
little fellow tumbled right to the ground and was killed. He was such
a good singer, too. The cat got the second. Then I had a third, called
'Tweetie'. I let him out of his cage one day when Bertie was filing
the keel of his boat, and we suppose he must have picked up some of
the bits of lead, because he grew quite ill and died. I buried him
under the rosebush in my garden, and Granny offered a prize to whoever
could write the best piece of poetry a