“I don’t see how you do it,” said Jerry; “I could n’t make anything that way if I should try.  I don’t believe our hens more than pay their way, if they do that.”

“If you should manage as I do, I guess you would make something,” replied Clinton.

“No, it isn’t my luck,” said Jerry; “if I worked ever so hard, I should n’t be any better off for it.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Clinton; “there ’s no luck about it.  Any boy could make out just as well as I have done, if he took the same trouble.  You try it, now, and see.”

“No, I shan’t try, for I know just as well as I want to, how it would turn out,” replied Jerry.

“How can you know if you never tried it?” inquired Clinton.

Jerry did not answer this question, and perhaps he could not.  He preferred to comfort himself with the foolish plea of the lazy, that he was not one of “the lucky ones,” and it was useless for him to think of succeeding in anything of that kind.

Clinton did not make the most distant allusion to the Shanghae Rooster’s letter, although Jerry felt sure that he knew all about it.  The latter also avoided all reference to it.  Oscar could hardly keep from introducing the matter, but his cousin’s injunction to “keep dark” prevailed, and he was able to restrain his impatient tongue.

The boys now took a look at the piggery, where they found several fat, dignified grunters, together with a family of little squealers, who seemed quite too clean and delicate to occupy such an enclosure.  They then went all over the great barn, which happened to be tenantless, the cows being at pasture and the oxen and horse off at work.  Oscar’s attention was attracted to a scrap cut from a newspaper, which was pasted upon one of the posts of the horse’s stall.  It read as follows: 

  “THE HORSE’S PRAYER.

  “Up hill, spare thou me;
  Down hill, take care of thee;
  On level ground, spare me not,
  Nor give me water when I ’m hot.”

Clinton said he found these lines in a newspaper about the time he began to drive alone, and he stuck them up upon the stall that he might not forget them.

“Hallo, who is this?” inquired Oscar, as a little curly-haired girl of six years came tripping into the barn.

The little girl to whom the inquiry was addressed turned a shy and roguish look towards the strange boy, and then edged along to Clinton, and nestled her little hand in his.

“Can’t you tell him who you are?” inquired Clinton.  “He came all the way from Boston, where cousin Ettie and cousin Willie live.  He ’s Jerry’s cousin, and little Mary Preston’s cousin.  Now you’ll tell him what your name is, won’t you?”

“Annie Davenport—­that’s my name,” she replied, in her artless, winning way.

“Then you’re Clinton’s sister, are you?” inquired Oscar.

“Yes, and he ’s my brother,” she quickly added, with a proud look that greatly amused the boys.