"They love it, don't they?" Katy watched them. "Yes," said the Captain thoughtfully, "I guess every living thing enjoys this beautiful world of ours--when it is given the chance." CHAPTER VII PIGS "Take a hand to a wooster? Take a hand to a wooster!" Dick Harding was standing out in the road near the white cottage one morning about two weeks after the hunting party, trying to decide whether he would take a walk or a ride to settle his breakfast. He glanced down into Jilly's sober little face lifted to his appealingly. "Take a hand to a wooster? Charmed, I'm sure. Point out the rooster. But what has his rooster-ship done, and how can I make him keep still long enough to lay hands on him, Jilly Dilly?" Jilly clasped five fat fingers around two of his, smiled confidingly and made her plea once more: "Take a hand to a wooster." Dick looked puzzled, but Jilly was pulling and he meekly followed her guidance. "I haven't the faintest idea what you are getting me into, young lady, but go ahead, I'm at your service." Jilly pattered along not deigning to reply to his remarks. Jilly considered words as something to be reserved for business purposes only. She led him to the chicken yard, pressed her small face against the wire netting that enclosed it, and contemplated the fowls ecstatically. Dick contemplated also, trying to pick out the offending rooster. "Which rooster, Jilly?" But Jilly only smiled vaguely. "Feed a wooster," she commanded after another season of gazing. "Yes, to be sure, but what would you suggest that I offer him? There doesn't seem to be anything edible round here." The chickens seconded Jilly's suggestion, coming to the fence and clucking excitedly. Jilly looked pained at Dick's indolence and, taking his hand, led him over to a covered wooden box, which was found to contain shelled corn. The chickens were duly fed, but Dick still puzzled over the unchastized rooster until Marian enlightened him later. "I shall have to give you a key 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.