First came the three dogs, Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher, and then the pigs, who settled down in the straw immediately in front of the platform.
The hens perched themselves on the window-sills, the pigeons fluttered up to the rafters, the sheep and cows lay down behind the pigs and began to chew the cud.
The two cart-horses, Boxer and Clover, came in together, walking very slowly and setting down their vast hairy hoofs with great care lest there should be some small animal concealed in the straw.
Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.
Boxer was an enormous beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any two ordinary horses put together.
A white stripe down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid appearance, and in fact he was not of first-rate intelligence, but he was universally respected for his steadiness of character and tremendous powers of work.
After the horses came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey.
Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered.
He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark - for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.
Alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed.