When Ardath went back to the garden, after taking a long time to enjoy her bouquet, Grand father looked at his watch. "It is now twenty minutes past seven o'clock. In eleven minutes the sun will go down. That means the birds and the chickens are fluffing their feathers and settling down in their roosts." Grand father announced, then added, "It is a good a time as any to keep that promise about showing you the chickens on the roast."

On the way to the chicken house, Arthur asked Grandfather how he knew the sun would go down in eleven minutes. Grandfather explained that he got his information from an agricultural almanac.

"In the almanac, it tells each day what time the sun will rise and what time it will set. All Pennsylvania farmers use it as a guide for planting their crops and gardens. These are long days. The sun is in the sky fifteen hours. When it rains, or is cloudy, we don't see it, but it is shining bright, whether we see it or not."

"Did it say in the almanac that it will rain, tomorrow?" Arthur wanted to know.

"It said, ‘light local showers'. That means some places it may rain and other places it may be cloudy or the sun may keep shining so it can be seen all day." Grandfather looked at the sky again.

"If we want to see the chickens on the roost, we better hurry or we'll be caught in the rain.

"I'd like to get caught in the rain and get all soaking wet." Arthur did not feel like hurrying to avoid the rain, but Grandfather started off toward the implement shed with his hoe and Arthur followed. Ardath went along, too, because the implement shed was on the way to the chicken house.

"Now, we must be very quiet", Grandfather said when they were near the chicken house. "If we scare the chickens, they will flutter, squawk and fly off the roost. We won't open the chicken house door. We will look in the window, here." Grandfather pointed to a window high on the back wall of the chicken house. He lifted the Children one at a tome to look into it. They saw the chickens huddled together on long, thin pieces of timber that extended from one wall of the chicken house to the other wall.

"Chickens are birds, you know." Grandfather reminded them in case they had forgotten. "If these birds were not living in a chicken house, they would roost on tree limbs. So, we try to put up frames that they can sit on that are something like the tree limbs they would find if they lived out-of-doors."

"Did you build the chicken's heir house and put the roosts in them to sit on?" Arthur asked.

"No, Adam built this hose for the chickens, but I built a dozen or more such houses when I was a young man like Adam." Grandfather told Arthur, letting him know that carpentry was important.

Ardath asked if there were mother chickens and baby chickens on the roost, because she could not see very well in the dusk. Grandfather said the baby chicks did not ‘roost', but huddled in the corner of their house until their wings were strong enough to fly to the roost.

"The mother hen sits with the chicks and tries to cover them with her wings." Grandfather explained. That was something Adam had not told them about chickens.

"With the chickens all snug and warm on their roosts, it seems like the right time for two children I'm looking at, to get ready for a ‘good-night hour'." Grandfather looked at Ardath and Arthur with a question in his eyes and voice, although he had not asked a question.

Ardath said, "Thank you, Grandfather, for showing us the chickens going to bed. Now we know what you mean when you say, ‘we go to bed with the chickens'. Come on, Arthur, we are ready to ‘go to bed with the chickens'." She laughed as she took her brother by the hand.

On the way across the lawn to the house, Arthur made up a little song that he thought was so funny he would sing it to his Father and Mother when they come back to Beverly Farm.

"Here we go to bed with the chickens. We like to go to bed with the chickens, when the sun goes down. We like to get up with the chickens when the sun comes over the hill in the morning."

Ardath said, "That song doesn't have a rhyme. I'll sing one." She made up a rhyme about walking across the land, hand in hand. Grandfather joined hands with the children, as he listened.

When Ardath had finished her song, "We walk hand in hand across the land, a jolly little band, to say good night, which is right when the sun goes down back of the ground." Arthur said he liked his song best and kept right on singing it while Ardath sang her song.

Grandfather smiled. "They are both good songs." he decided.
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