Crossword-Solution: CHEEPERS 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 15

Then, just as she was poising one dainty foot ready for the first step in advance, and had sounded a forward note to the cheepers around her, Old Dominick calmly stalked forward, stepped right across the Doctor's coaxing hand held out to Spangles, and, settling herself in the coop, began, with her voracious band of little plebeians, to devour the grain with stolid appreciation.

They’ve never had his spirit, the young cheepers, Not one; and Jim’s the lave of the clutch; and he Will never lord it at Krindlesyke till I’m straked.

Ponto by this time has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into his kennel, and coiled himself up into the arms of "tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer makes offer of a collie, who, from numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don in his way among the cheepers, and has been known in a turnip-field to stand in an attitude very similar to that of setting.

And mind, not mere pouts--cheepers--for we are no chicken-butchers--but all thumpers--cocks and hens as big as their parents, and the parents themselves likewise; not one of which fell _out of bounds_ (to borrow a phrase from the somewhat silly though skilful pastime of pigeon-shooting), except one that suddenly soared half-way up to the moon, and then "Into such strange vagaries fell As he would dance," and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch.

That can only be done where pouts prevail, and cheepers keep chiding; and where you have half-a-dozen attendants to hand you double-barrels _sans_ intermission, for a round dozen of hours spent in a perpetual fire.