The ladies, however, looked and smelt in some dismay, for the centre of the yard was a mountain of manure and straw, with a puce-coloured pond beside it. On the summit of the mountain a handsome ruddy cock, with a splendid dark-green arched tail, clucked, chuckled, and scratched for his speckled, rose-crowned hens, a green-headed, curly-tailed drake "steered forth his fleet upon the lake" of brown ducks and their yellow progeny, and pigs of the plum-pudding order rooted in the intermediate regions. The road which led to the cart-sheds and to the house, skirted round this unsavoury tract. "Oh, Edmund!" sighed Mary. "Farmer's wife, Mary," said her husband, smiling. "It ought to be a perfect nosegay to you." "I'm sure it is not wholesome," she said, looking really distressed, and he dropped his teasing tone, and said-- "Of course it shall be remedied! I will see to it." A dismal screeching and cackling here attracted the attention of the sisters, who started towards Pucklechurch's cottage, and the fowl-house, (a very foul house by the by) in front of which, on a low wooden stool, sat a tidy old woman, Betty Pucklechurch in fact, in a tall muslin cap, spotted kerchief blue gown, and coarse apron, with a big girl before her holding the unfortunate hen, whose cries had startled them. "Oh, don't go near! She is killing it," cried Dora. "No;" as the hen, with a final squawk, shook out her ruffled feathers, and rushed away to tell her woes to her companions on the dunghill, while the old woman jumped up, smoothed down her apron, and curtsied low. "What were you doing?" asked Mary, still startled. "Only whipping her breast with nettles, ma'am, to teach her to sit close in her nest, the plaguey thing, and not be gadding after the rest." "Poor thing!" cried Dora. "But oh, look, look, Mary, at the dear little chickens!" They were in the greatest delight at the three broods of downy little chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate black legs at sight of Betty. "Ay! he be always after me," she said. "They terrify one terrible, as if 'twas their mother, till they can run with the rest." Dora would have petted the lamb, but it retreated from her, behind Betty's petticoats, and she could only listen to Mary's questions about how much butter was made from how many cows milk, and then be taken to see the two calves, one of which Betty pronounced to be "but a staggering Bob yet, but George Butcher would take he in a sen'night," which sounded so like senate, that it set Dora wondering what council was to pronounce on the fate of the poor infant bull. Over his stall, Edmund found them, after an inspection of the pig-styes, and having much offended Master Pucklechurch by declaring that he would have them kept clean, and the pigs no longer allowed to range about the yard.