Our Cousins in Ohio Author:Mary Botham Howitt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 35 CHAPTER III. February. Willie chopped small wood for kindling the fires; and when this was done, and lessons said, he and his sisters played in the hay... more »-loft. This hay-loft was a large place, where they could run and jump and shout, and do just what they liked. Three or four times in a day, they looked for eggs; and sometimes had the pleasure of discovering quite new nests in new places and sometimes there would be many eggs in them. They thought that there was something uncommonly beautiful in the look of eggs in a nest. They made a terrible discovery on the first day of this month in the hen-house. A poor hen, sadly torn, lay mangled and bloody on her nest, where she had just laid an egg. There was a great consultation as to the cause of her death, but nothing very satisfactory could be made out; it was supposed to be a hawk. The father was now from home, and Willie had again certain out-of-doors work to do during his absence; he had to give the pigs their allotted portion of corn-cobs; to let the cows out to water; to give the calf hay, and to feed the poultry. On the day when his father returned, Willie went in the carriage to meet him in the city. On their drive home, they twice stuck fast in the mud, and it was all that Farmer could do to pull them out. The cause of this was that the wooden bridge over the creek was damaged by the floods, and they were obliged to go by another road which was broken up, and deep in mud. Little Timothy, the new dog, showed no inclination to go. He always looked very mildly and submissively into every body's face, as if he would say, "Do, please to let me stop with you; I will be very good; I will not come into the house with wet and dirty feet, nor do anything to displease you; only do not send me away, for I love you a...« less