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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Bird, by Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Bird
+
+Author: Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+Illustrator: Edward L. Chase
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2005 [EBook #16963]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN BIRD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN BIRD
+
+BY
+
+MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
+
+Author of "The Melting of Molly," "Phyllis," "Sue Jane," "The Tinder Box,"
+etc.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD L. CHASE
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1918
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+_Published, September, 1918_
+
+[Transcriber's note: Minor typos corrected.]
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Polly, all restraint leaving
+her young face and body as she fell on her knees before the sultan]
+
+
+
+
+TO
+IDA CLYDE CLARKE
+WHOSE COURAGE INSPIRES ME
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Polly, all restraint leaving her young face
+and body as she fell on her knees before the sultan
+
+A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while Adam stood over
+her with something in his arms
+
+I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins came and
+welcomed him
+
+And Bud was beautiful in the "custom-made" fifteen-dollar gray cheviot with
+his violet eyes and yellow shock, in spite of his red ears
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN BIRD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The primary need of a woman's nature is always supposed to be love, but
+very suddenly I discovered that in my case it was money, a lot of it and
+quick. That is, I thought I needed a lot and in a very great hurry; but if
+I had known what I know now, I might have been contented feeding upon the
+bread of some kind of charity, for instance, like being married to Matthew
+Berry the very next day after I discovered my poverty. But at that period
+of my life I was a very ignorant girl, and in the most noble spirit of a
+desperate adventure I embarked upon the quest of the Golden Bird, which in
+one short year has landed me--I am now the richest woman in the world.
+
+"But, Ann Craddock, you know nothing at all about a chicken in any more
+natural state than in a croquette," stormed Matthew at me as he savagely
+speared one of those inoffensive articles of banquet diet with a sharp
+silver fork while he squared himself with equal determination between me
+and any possible partner for the delicious one-step that the band in the
+ball-room was beginning to send out in inviting waves of sound to round the
+dancers in from loitering over their midnight food.
+
+"The little I do _not_ know about the chicken business, after one week
+spent in pursuit of that knowledge through every weird magazine and state
+agricultural bulletin in the public library, even you could learn, Matthew
+Berry, with your lack of sympathy with the great American wealth producer,
+the humble female chicken known in farmer patois as a hen. Did you know
+that it only costs about two dollars and thirteen cents to feed a hen a
+whole year and that she will produce twenty-seven dollars and a half for
+her owner, the darling thing? I know I'll just love her when I get to know
+her--them better, as I will in only about eighteen hours now."
+
+"Ann, you are mad--mad!" foamed Matthew, as he set down his plate of
+perfectly good and untasted food, and buried his head in his hands until
+his mop of black hair looked like a big blot of midnight.
+
+"I'm not mad, Matthew, just dead poor, an heiress out of a job and with the
+necessity of earning her bread by the sweat of her brow instead of
+consuming cake by the labor of other people. Uncle Cradd is coming in again
+with a two-horse wagon, and the carriage to move us out to Elmnest
+to-morrow morning. Judge Rutherford will attend to selling all the property
+and settle with father's creditors. Another wagon is coming for father's
+library, and in two days he won't know that Uncle Cradd and I have moved
+him, if I can just get him started on a bat with Epictetus or old Horace.
+Then me for the tall timbers and my friend the hen.
+
+"Oh, Ann, for the love of high heaven, marry me to-morrow, and let me move
+you and Father Craddock over into that infernal, empty old barn I keep open
+as a hotel for nigger servants. Marry me instead--"
+
+"Instead of the hen?" I interrupted him with a laugh. "I can't, Matt, you
+dear thing. I honestly can't. I've got to go back to the land from which my
+race sprang and make it blossom into a beautiful existence for those two
+dear old boys. When Uncle Cradd heard of the smash from that horrible
+phosphate deal he was at the door the next morning at sun-up, driving the
+two gray mules to one wagon himself, with old Rufus driving the gray horses
+hitched to that queer tumble-down, old family coach, though he hadn't
+spoken to father since he married mother twenty-eight years ago.
+
+"'Ready to move you all home, bag and baggage, William,' he said, as he
+took father into his huge old arms clad in the rusty broadcloth of his best
+suit, which I think is the garment he purchased for father's very worldly,
+town wedding with my mother, which he came from Riverfield to attend for
+purposes of disinheriting the bridegroom and me, though I was several years
+in the future at that date. 'Elmnest is as much yours as mine, as I told
+you when you sprigged off to marry in town. Get your dimity together,
+Nancy! Your grandmother Craddock's haircloth trunk is strapped on behind
+her carriage there, and Rufus will drive you home. These mules are too
+skittish for him to handle. Fine pair, eh, William?' And right there in the
+early dawn, almost in front of the garage that contained his touring
+Chauvinnais and my gray roadster, father stood in his velvet dressing-gown
+and admired the two moth-eaten old animals. Now, I honestly ask you,
+Matthew, could a woman of heart refuse at least to attempt to see those two
+great old boys through the rest of their lives in peace and comfort
+together? Elmnest is roof and land and that is about all, for Uncle Cradd
+never would let father give him a cent on account of his feud with mother,
+even after she had been dead for years. Father would have gone home with
+him that morning, but I made him stay to turn things over to Judge
+Rutherford. Aren't they great, those two old pioneers?"
+
+"They are the best sports ever, Ann, and I say let's fix up Elmnest for
+them to live in when they won't stay with us, and for a summer home for us
+to go and take--take the children for rural training. Now what do you
+say--wedding to-morrow?" And the light in dear old Matthew's eyes was very
+lovely indeed as the music grew less blatant and the waiter turned down the
+lights near the little alcove that the wide walnut paneling made beside the
+steps that go up to the balcony. I have always said that the Clovermead
+Country Club has the loveliest house anywhere in the South.
+
+"No, Matthew, I care too much about you to let you marry a woman in search
+of a roof and food," I answered him, with all of the affection I seemed to
+possess at that time in my eyes. "You deserve better than that from me."
+
+"Now, see here, Ann Craddock, did I or did I not ask you to marry me at
+your fourteenth birthday party, which was just ten years ago, and did you
+or did you not tell me just to wait until you got grown? Have you or have
+you not reached the years of discretion and decision? I am ready to marry,
+I am!" And as he made this announcement of his matrimonially inclined
+condition of mind, Matthew took my hand in his and laid his cheek against
+it.
+
+"My heart isn't grown up yet, Matt," I said softly, with all the tenderness
+I, as I before remarked, at that time possessed. "Don't wait for me. Marry
+Belle Proctor or somebody and--and bring the--babies out to Elmnest for--"
+
+The explosion that then followed landed me in Owen Murray's arms on the
+floor of the ball-room, and landed Matthew in his big racing-car, which I
+could hear go roaring down the road beyond the golf-links.
+
+There is a certain kind of woman whose brain develops with amazing
+normality and strength, but whose heart remains very soft-fibered and
+uncertain, with tendencies to lapse into second childhood. I am that garden
+variety, and it took the exercising of many heart interests to toughen my
+cardiac organ.
+
+As I traveled out the long turnpike that wound itself through the Harpeth
+Valley to the very old and tradition-mossed town of Riverfield, in the
+high, huge-wheeled, swinging old coach of my Great-grandmother Craddock,
+sitting pensively alone while father occupied the front seat beside Uncle
+Cradd, both of them in deep converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle
+Cradd bumbled the air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old
+bass, I should have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the
+devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon his
+old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into exile; but
+I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon the faded rose
+leather of those ancestral cushions? That was not the case, for upon the
+seat beside me rode the Golden Bird in a beautiful crate, which bore the
+legend, "Cock, full brother to Ladye Rosecomb, the world's champion,
+three-hundred-and-fourteen-egg hen, insured at one thousand dollars.
+Express sixteen dollars." And in another larger crate, strapped on top of
+the old haircloth trunk, which held several corduroy skirts, some coarse
+linen smocks made hurriedly by Madam Felicia after a pattern in "The
+Review," and several pairs of lovely, high-topped boots, as well as a
+couple of Hagensack sweaters, rode his family, to whom he had not yet even
+spoken. The family consisted of ten perfectly beautiful white Leghorn
+feminine darlings whose crate was marked, "Thoroughbreds from Prairie Dog
+Farm, Boulder, Colorado." I had obtained the money to purchase these very
+much alive foundations for my fortune, also the smart farmer's costume, or
+rather my idea of the correct thing in rustics, by selling all the lovely
+lingerie I had brought from Paris with me just the week before the terrible
+war had crashed down upon the world, and which I had not worn because I had
+not needed them, to Bess Rutherford and Belle Proctor at very high prices,
+because who could tell whether France would ever procure their like again?
+They were composed mostly of incrustations of embroidery and real Val, and
+anyway the Golden Bird only cost seven hundred dollars instead of the
+thousand, and the ladies Bird only ten dollars apiece, which to me did not
+seem exactly fair, as they were of just as good family as he. I was very
+proud of myself for having been professional enough to follow the
+directions of my new big red book on "The Industrious Fowl," and to buy
+Golden Bird and his family from localities which were separated as far as
+is the East from the West. My company was responsible for my
+light-heartedness at a time when I should have been weeping with vain
+regrets at leaving life--and perhaps love, for I couldn't help hearing in
+my mind's ears that great dangerous racer bearing Matthew away from me at
+the rate of eighty miles an hour. I was figuring on just how long it would
+take the five to eight hundred children of the Bird family, which I
+expected to incarnate themselves out of egg-shells, to increase to a flock
+of two thousand, from which, I was assured by the statistics in that very
+reliable book, I ought to make three thousand dollars a year, maybe five,
+with "good management." Also I was not at all worried about the "good
+management" to be employed. I intended to begin to exert it the minute of
+my arrival in the township of Riverfield. I had even already begun to use
+"thoughtful care," for I had brought a box of tea biscuits along, and I
+felt a positive thrill of affection for Mr. G. Bird as he gratefully
+gobbled a crushed one from my hand. Also it was dear of him the way he
+raised his proud head and chuckled to his brides in the crate behind him
+to come and get their share. It was pathetic the way he called and called
+and they answered, until I finally stopped their mouths with ten other
+dainties, so that he could consume his in peace. Even at that early stage
+of our friendship I liked the Golden Bird, and perhaps it was just a wave
+of prophetic psychology that made me feel so warmly towards the proud,
+white young animal who was to lead me to--
+
+So instead of the despair due the occasion, I was happy as I jogged slowly
+out over the twenty long miles that stretched out like a silvery ribbon
+dropped down upon the meadows and fields that separate the proud city of
+Hayesville and the gray and green little old hamlet of Riverfield, which
+nestles in a bend of the Cumberland River and sleeps time away under its
+huge old oak and elm and hackberry trees, kept perpetually green by the
+gnarled old cedars that throw blue-berried green fronds around their winter
+nakedness. As we rode slowly along, with a leisure I am sure all the
+motor-car world has forgotten exists, the two old boys on the front seat
+hummed and chuckled happily while I breathed in great gulps of a large,
+meadow-sweet spring tang that seemed to fairly soak into the circulation of
+my heart. The February day was cool with yet a kind of tender warmth in its
+little gust of Southern wind that made me feel as does that brand of very
+expensive Rhine wine which Albert at the Salemite on Forty-second Street in
+New York keeps for Gale Beacon specially, and which makes Gale so furious
+for you not to recognize, remember about, and comment upon at his really
+wonderful dinners to bright and shining lights in art and literature.
+Returning from New York to the Riverfield Road through the Harpeth Valley,
+I also discovered upon the damsel Spring a hint of a soft young costume of
+young green and purple and yellow that was as yet just a mist being draped
+over her by the Southern wind.
+
+"I feel like the fairy princess being driven into a land of enchantment,
+Mr. Golden Bird," I remarked as I leaned back upon the soft old cushions
+and took in the first leisurely breath of the air of the open road that my
+lungs had ever inhaled: one simply gulps air when seated in a motor-car.
+"It is all so simple and easy and--"
+
+Just at this moment happened the first real adventure of my quest, and at
+that time it seemed a serious one, though now I would regard it as of very
+little moment. Suddenly there came the noise of snipping cords, the feeling
+of jar and upheaval, and before I could turn more than half-way around for
+purposes of observation, the entire feminine Bird family in their temporary
+crate abode slid down into the dust of the road with a great crash. I held
+my breath while, with a jolt and a bounce and a squeak of the heavy old
+springs, Uncle Cradd brought the ancestral family coach to a halt about ten
+feet away from the wreck, which was a mêlée of broken timber, squeaking
+voices, and flapping wings. As soon as I recovered from the shock I sprang
+from my cushions beside Mr. G. Bird, who was fairly yelling clucks of
+command at this family-to-be, and ran to their assistance. Now, I am very
+long and fleet of limb, but those white Leghorn ladies were too swift for
+me, and before I reached the wreck, they had all ten disentangled
+themselves from the crushed timbers and had literally taken to the woods,
+through which the Riverfield ribbon was at that moment winding itself.
+Clucking and chuckling, they concealed themselves in an undergrowth of
+coral-strung buck bushes, little scrub cedars, and dried oak leaves, and I
+could hear them holding a council of war that sounded as if they were to
+depart forever to parts unknown. In a twinkling of an eye I saw my future
+fortune literally take wings, and in my extremity I cried aloud.
+
+"Oh, call them all back, Mr. Golden Bird," I pleaded.
+
+"Now, Nancy, that is always what I said about hens. They are such pesky
+womanish things that it's beneath the dignity of a man to bother with 'em.
+I haven't had one on the place for twenty years. We'll just turn this
+rooster loose with them and we can go on home in peace," said Uncle Cradd
+as he peered around the side of the coach while father's mild face appeared
+on the other side. As he spoke, he reached back and released my Golden Bird
+from his crate and sent him flying out into the woods in the direction of
+his family.
+
+"Oh, they are the only things in the world that stand between me and
+starvation," I wailed, though not loud enough for either father or Uncle
+Cradd to hear. "Please, please, Golden Bird, come back and bring the others
+with you," I pleaded as I held out my hand to the proud white Sultan, who
+had paused by the roadside on his way to his family and was now turning
+bright eyes in the direction of my outstretched hand. In all the troubles
+and trials through which that proud Mr. G. Bird and I went hand in hand, or
+rather wing in hand, in which I was at times hard and cold and
+disappointed in him, I have never forgotten that he turned in his tracks
+and walked majestically back to my side and peered into the outstretched
+hand with a trustful and inquiring peck. Some kind fortune had brought it
+to pass that I held the package of tea biscuits in my other hand, and in a
+few breathless seconds he was pecking at one and calling to the foolish,
+faithless lot of huddled hens in the bushes to come to him immediately.
+First he called invitingly while I held my breath, and then he commanded as
+he scratched for lost crumbs in the white dust of the Riverfield ribbon,
+but the foolish creatures only huddled and squeaked, and at a few cautious
+steps I took in their direction, they showed a decided threat of vanishing
+forever into the woods.
+
+"Oh, what will I do, Mr. G. Bird?" I asked in despair, with a real sob in
+my throat as I looked toward the family coach, from which I could hear a
+happy and animated discussion of Plato's Republic going on between the two
+old gentlemen who had thirty years' arrears in argument and conversation to
+make up. I could see that no help would come from that direction. "I can't
+lose them forever," I said again, and this time there was the real sob
+arising unmistakably in my voice.
+
+"Just stand still, and I'll call them to you," came a soft, deep voice out
+of the forest behind me, and behold, a man stood at my side!
+
+The man's name is Adam.
+
+"Now give me a cracker and watch 'em come," he said, as he came close to my
+side and took a biscuit from my surprised and nerveless hand. "Ah, but you
+are one beauty, aren't you?" he further remarked, and I was not positively
+sure whether he meant me or the Golden Bird until I saw that he had reached
+down and was stroking Mr. G. Bird with a delighted hand. "Chick, chick,
+chick!" he commanded, with a note that was not at all unlike the commanding
+one the Sultan had used a few minutes past, only more so, and in less than
+two seconds all those foolish hens were scrambling around our feet. In
+fact, the command in his voice had been so forcible that I myself had moved
+several feet nearer to him until I, too, was in the center of my
+scrambling, clucking Bird venture.
+
+I don't like beautiful men. I never did. I think that a woman ought to have
+all the beauty there is, and I feel that a man who has any is in some way
+dishonest, but I never before saw anything like that person who had come
+out of the woods to the rescue of my family fortune, and I simply stared at
+him as he stood with a fluff of seething white wings around his feet and
+towered against the green gray of an old tree that hung over the side of
+the road. He was tall and broad, but lithe and lovely like some kind of a
+woods thing, and heavy hair of the same brilliant burnished red that I had
+seen upon the back of a prize Rhode Island Red in the lovely water-color
+plates in my chicken book,--which had tempted me to buy "red" until I had
+read about the triumphs of the Leghorn "whites,"--waved close to his head,
+only ruffling just over his ears enough to hide the tips of them. His eyes
+were set so far back under their dark, heavy, red eyebrows that they seemed
+night-blue with their long black fringe of lashes. His face was square and
+strong and gentle, and the collar of his gray flannel shirt was open so
+that I could see that his head was set on his wide shoulders with lines
+like an old Greek masterpiece. Gray corduroy trousers were strapped around
+his waist by a wide belt made of some kind of raw-looking leather that was
+held together by two leather lacings, while on his feet were a kind of
+sandal shoes that appeared to be made of the same leather. He must have
+constructed both belt and shoes himself, and he hadn't any hat at all upon
+his crimson-gold thatch of hair. I looked at him so long that I had to look
+away, and then when I did I looked right back at him because I couldn't
+believe that he was true.
+
+"Now I'm going to pick them up gently, two at a time, tie their feet
+together with a piece of this string, and hand them to you to put inside
+the carriage. I'll catch the cock first, the handsome old sport," and as
+Pan spoke, he began to suit his actions to his words with amazing tact and
+skill. I shall always be glad that the first chicken I ever held in my arms
+was put into them gently by that woods man, and that it was the Golden Bird
+himself. "Put him in and shut the door, and he'll calm the ladies as you
+bring them to him," he commanded as he bent down and lifted two of the Bird
+brides and began to tie their feet together with a piece of cord he had
+taken from a deep pocket in the gray trousers.
+
+"Oh, thank you," I said with a depth of gratitude in my voice that I did
+not know I possessed. "You are the most wonderful man I ever saw--I mean
+that I ever saw with chickens," I said, ending the remark in an agony of
+embarrassment. "I don't know much about them. I mean chickens," I hastened
+to add, and made matters worse.
+
+"Oh, they are easy, when you get to know 'em, chickens--or men," he said
+kindly, without a spark in his eyes back of their black bushes. "Are they
+yours?"
+
+"They are all the property I have got in the world," I answered as I
+clasped the last pair of biddies to my breast, for while we had been
+holding our primitive conversation, I had been obeying his directions and
+loading the Birds into Grandmother Craddock's stately equipage. Anxiety
+shone from my eyes into his sympathetic ones.
+
+"Well, you'll be an heiress in no time with them to start you, with 'good
+management.' I never saw a finer lot," he said, as he walked to the door of
+the carriage with me, with the last pair of white Leghorn ladies in his
+arms.
+
+"But maybe I haven't got that management," I faltered, with my anxiety
+getting tearful in my words.
+
+"Oh, you'll learn," he said, with such heavenly soothing in his voice that
+I almost reached out my hands and clung to him as he settled the fussing
+poultry in the bottom of the carriage in such a way as to leave room for my
+feet among them. Mr. G. Bird was perched on the seat at my side and was
+craning his neck down and soothingly scolding his family. "How are you, Mr.
+Craddock?" Pan asked of Uncle Cradd's back, and by his question interrupted
+an argument that sounded, from the Greek phrases flying, like a battle on
+the walls of Troy.
+
+"Well, well, how are you, Adam?" exclaimed Uncle Cradd, as he turned around
+and greeted the woodsman with a smile of positive delight.
+
+I had known that man's name was Adam, but I don't know how I knew.
+
+"This is my brother, Mr. William Craddock, who's come home to me to live
+and die where he belongs, and that young lady is Nancy. Those chickens are
+just a whim of hers, and we have to humor her. Can we lift you as far as
+Riverfield?" Uncle Cradd made his introduction and delivered his invitation
+all in one breath.
+
+"I'm glad to meet you, sir, and I am grateful for your assistance in
+capturing my daughter's whims," said father, as he came partly out of his
+B.C. daze.
+
+As he took my hand into his slender, but very powerful grasp, that man had
+the impertinence to laugh into my eyes at my parent's double-entendre,
+which he had intended as a simple single remark.
+
+"No, thank you, sir; I've got to get across Paradise Ridge before sundown.
+The lambs are dropping fast over at Plunkett's, and I want to make sure
+those Southdown ewes are all right," he answered as he put my hand out of
+his, though I almost let it rebel and cling, and took for a second the
+Golden Bird's proud head into his palm.
+
+"I'll be over at Elmnest before your--your 'good judgment' needs mine," he
+said to me as softly as I think a mother must speak to a child as she
+unloosens clinging dependent fingers. As he spoke he shut the door of the
+old ark, and Uncle Cradd drove on, leaving him standing on the edge of the
+great woods looking after us.
+
+"Oh, I wish that man were going home with us, Mr. G. Bird, or we were going
+home with him," I said with a kind of terror of the unknown creeping over
+me. As I spoke I reached out and cuddled the Golden darling into the hollow
+of my arm. Some day I am going to travel to the East shore of Baltimore to
+the Rosecomb Poultry Farm to see the woman who raised the Golden Bird and
+cultivated such a beautiful confiding, and affectionate nature in him. He
+soothed me with a chuckle as he pecked playfully at my fingers and then
+called cheerfully down to the tethered white Ladies of Leghorn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+As we ambled towards the sun, which was setting over old Harpeth, the
+tallest humpbacked hill on Paradise Ridge, the Greek battle raged on the
+front seat and there was peace with anxiety in the back of the ancestral
+coach.
+
+As the wheels and the two old gentlemen rumbled and the Bird's family
+clucked and crooned, with only an occasional irritated squawk, I, for the
+first time since the landslide of our fortune, began to take real thought
+of the morrow.
+
+"Yes, landslide is a good name for what is happening to us, and I hope
+we'll slide or land on the home base, whatever is the correct term in the
+national game that Matthew has given up trying to teach me to enjoy," I
+said to myself as I settled down to look into our situation.
+
+I found that it was not at all astonishing that father had lost all the
+fortune that my mother had left him and me when she died three years ago.
+It was astonishing that the old dreamer had kept it as long as he had, and
+it was only because most of it had been in land and he had from the first
+lived serenely and comfortably on nice flat slices of town property cut off
+whenever he needed it. He had been a dreamer when he came out of the
+University of Virginia ten years after the war, and it had been the tragedy
+of Uncle Cradd's life that he had not settled down with him on the very
+broad, but very poor, ancestral acres of Elmnest, to slice away with him at
+that wealth instead of letting himself be captured in all his poetic beauty
+at a dance in Hayesville by a girl whose father had made her half a million
+dollars in town land deals. Uncle Cradd's resentment had been bitter, and
+as he was the senior of his twin brother by several hours, he demanded that
+father sell him his half of Elmnest, and for it had paid his entire fortune
+outside of the bare acres. In poetic pride father had acceded to his
+demand, lent the money thrust upon him to the first speculator who got to
+him, and the two brothers had settled themselves down twenty miles apart in
+the depths of a feud, to eat their hearts out for each other. The rich man
+sought a path to the heart of the poor man, but was repulsed until the day
+after the spectacular failure of his phosphate company had penetrated into
+the wilds of little Riverfield, and immediately Uncle Cradd had hitched up
+the moth-eaten string in his old stables and come into town for us, and in
+father's sweet old heart there was never an idea of not, as he put it,
+"going home." I had never seen Elmnest, but I knew something of the
+situation, and that is where the Golden Bird arrived on the situation. The
+morning after our decision to return to the land--a decision in which I had
+borne no part but a sympathetic one after I had listened half the night to
+father's raptures over Uncle Cradd as a Greek scholar with whom one would
+wish to spend one's last days--the February copy of "The Woman's Review"
+arrived, and on the first page was an article from a woman who earns five
+thousand dollars a year with the industrious hen on a little farm of ten
+acres. There were lovely pictures of her with her feathered family, and I
+decided that what a woman with the limited experience of a head
+stenographer in a railroad office could do, I, with my wider scope of
+travel and culture, could more than double on three hundred acres of land
+in the Harpeth Valley. Some day I'm going to see that woman and I'm going
+to stop by and speak sternly to the editor of "The Woman's Review" on my
+way.
+
+"Mr. G. Bird," I began as I reached this point and I saw that we were
+arriving in the heart of civilization, which was the square of a quaint
+little old town. From a motor-car acquaintance, I knew this to be
+Riverfield, but I had never even stopped because of the family pride
+involved in the feud now dead. "Mr. Bird," I repeated, "I am afraid I am
+up against it, and I hope you'll stand by me." He answered me by preening a
+breast feather and winking one of his bright eyes as Uncle Cradd stopped
+the ancient steeds in the center of the square, before a little old brick
+building that bore three signs over its tumble-down porch. They were:
+"Silas Beesley, Grocer," "U.S. Post-Office," and "Riverfield Bank and Trust
+Co."
+
+"Hey, Si, here's William come home!" called Uncle Cradd, as a negro boy
+with a broad grin stood at the heads of the slow old horses, who, I felt
+sure, wouldn't have moved except under necessity before the judgment day.
+In less time than I can take to tell it father descended literally into the
+arms of his friends. About half a dozen old farmers, some in overalls and
+some in rusty black broadcloth the color of Uncle Cradd's, poured out of
+the wide door of the business building before described, and they acted
+very much as I have seen the boys at Yale or Princeton act after a success
+or defeat on the foot-ball field. They hugged father and they slapped him
+on the back and they shook his hand as if it were not of human,
+sixty-year-old flesh and blood. Then they introduced a lot of stalwart
+young farmers to him, each of whom gave father hearty greetings, but
+refrained from even a glance in my direction as I sat enthroned on high on
+the faded old cushions and waited for an introduction, which at last Uncle
+Cradd remembered to give me.
+
+"This is Miss Nancy Craddock, gentlemen, named after my mother, and she's
+going to beat out the Bend in her chicken raising, which she's brought
+along with her. Come over, youngsters, and look her over. The fire in the
+parlor don't burn more than a half cord of wood on a Sunday, and you can
+come over Saturday afternoon and cut it against the Sabbath, with a welcome
+to any one of the spare rooms and a slab of Rufus's spare rib and a couple
+of both breakfast and supper muffins." All of the older men laughed at this
+sweeping invitation, and all the younger greeted it with ears that became
+instantly crimson. I verily believe they would one and all have fled and
+left me sitting there yet if a diversion had not arrived in the person of
+Mrs. Silas, who came bustling out of the door of the grocery or post-office
+or bank; whichever it is called, is according to your errand there. Mrs. Si
+was tall, and almost as broad as the door itself, with the rosiest cheeks
+and the bluest eyes I had ever beheld, and they crinkled with loveliness
+around their corners. She had white water-waves that escaped their decorous
+plastering into waving little tendril curls, and her mouth was as curled
+and red-lipped and dimpled as a girl's. In a twinkling of those blue eyes I
+fell out of the carriage into a pair of strong, soft, tender arms covered
+with stiff gray percale, and received two hearty kisses, one on each cheek.
+
+"God bless you, honeybunch, and I'm glad William has brought you home at
+last, the rascal." As she hugged me she reached out a strong hand and gave
+father first a good shake by his shoulder and then by his hand.
+
+"Fine girl, eh, Mary?" answered father as he returned the shoulder shake
+with a pat on the broad gray percale back, and retained the strong hand in
+his, with a frank clinging.
+
+I wondered if--
+
+"She's her Aunt Mary's blessed child, and I will have her making riz
+biscuits like old Madam Craddock's black Sue for you two boys in less than
+a week," she answered him, with a laugh that somehow sounded a bit dewy.
+
+"Oh, do you know about chickens, Mrs.--I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked as I
+clung to the hand to which father was not clinging.
+
+"Bless my heart, what's that I see setting up on old Madam Craddock's
+cushions? Is it a rooster or a dream bird?" she answered me by exclaiming
+as she caught sight of Mr. G. Bird sitting in lonely state, but as good as
+gold, upon the rose-leather cushions. "I thought I feathered out the finest
+chickens in the Harpeth Valley, but this one isn't human, you might say,"
+and as she spoke she shook off father and me, and approached the carriage
+and peered in with the reverence of a real poultry artist. "Bless my
+heart!" she again exclaimed.
+
+"Those are just Miss Nancy's whims to take the place of her card-routs and
+sinful dancing habits," said Uncle Cradd, with a great and indulgent
+amusement as all the little crowd of native friends gathered around to look
+at the Bird family.
+
+"Say, that rooster ought to have been met with a brass band like they did
+Mr. Cummins' horse, Lightheels, after he won all those cups up in the races
+at Cincinnati," said the tallest of the young farmers, whose ears had begun
+to assume their normal color.
+
+"And a sight more right he has to such a honor, Bud Beesley," replied Aunt
+Mary, with spirit, as she stroked the proud head of the Golden Bird. "It
+takes hens and women all their days to collect the money men spend on
+race-horses sometimes, my son."
+
+"Well, Mary, I reckon you aren't alluding to this pair of spanking grays
+I've got; but in case you are getting personal to them, I think we had
+better begin to go. Come, get in with the Whim family, Nancy, and let's be
+traveling. It's near on to a mile over a mighty rough road to the house
+from the gate here. Everybody come and see us." As he spoke Uncle Cradd
+assisted me with ceremony into the chariot beside the Golden hero of the
+hour, and started the ancient steeds into a tall old gate right opposite
+the bank-store-post-office. As he drove away something like warm tears
+misted across my eyes as I looked back and saw all the goodwill and
+friendliness in the eye of the farmer friends who watched our departure.
+
+"That, Ann, is the salt of the earth, and I don't see how I consumed life
+so long without it," said father as he turned, and looked at me with a
+sparkle in his mystic gray eyes that I had never seen there when we were
+seated at table with the mighty or making our bow in broadcloth and fine
+linen in some of the palaces of the world. I didn't know what it was then,
+but I do now; it is a land-love that lies deep in the heart of every man
+who is born out in meadows and fields. They never get over it and sometimes
+transmit it even to the second generation. I felt it stir and run in my
+blood as we rumbled and bumped up the long avenue of tall old elm-trees
+that led through deep fields which were even then greening with blue-grass
+and from which arose a rich loamy fragrance, and finally arrived at the
+most wonderful old brick house that I had ever seen in all of my life; it
+seemed to even my much traveled eyes in some ways the most wonderful abode
+for human beings I had ever beheld. It was not the traditional
+white-pillared mansion. It was more wonderful. The bricks had aged a rich,
+red purple, and were rimmed and splotched with soft green and gray moss
+under traceries of vines that were beginning to put out rich russet buds.
+The windows were filled with tiny diamond panes of glass, which glittered
+in the gables from the last rays of the sun setting over Old Harpeth, and
+the broad, gray shingled roof hovered down over the wide porch which would
+have sheltered fifty people safely. A flagstone walk and stone steps led up
+from the drive, seemingly right into the wide front door, which had small,
+diamond-paned, heavily shuttered windows in it, and queer holes on each
+side.
+
+"To shoot through in case of marauding Indians," answered Uncle Cradd to my
+startled question, which had sprung from a suspicion that must have been
+dictated by prenatal knowledge. As I entered the homestead of my fathers I
+felt that I had slipped back into the colonial age of America, and I found
+myself almost in a state of terror. The wide old hall, the heavy-beamed
+ceiling of which was so low that you felt again hovered, was lighted by
+only one candle, though a broad path of firelight lay across the dark
+polished floor from the room on the left, where appeared old Rufus
+enveloped in a large apron no whiter than the snowy kinks on his old head.
+
+"Time you has worship, Mas' Cradd, my muffins and spare ribs will be done,"
+he said after he had bestowed a grand bow first upon father and then upon
+me, with a soft-voiced greeting of "sarvant, little Mis', and sarvant, Mas'
+William."
+
+"It is fitting that we render unto the Lord thankfulness for your return
+home with Nancy, your child, William, in the first moments of your arrival.
+Come!" commanded Uncle Cradd, and he led us into a huge room as low
+ceilinged and dark-toned as the hall. In it there was only the firelight
+and another dim candle placed on a small table beside a huge old book. With
+the surety of long habit father walked straight to a large chair that was
+drawn close to the hearth on the side opposite the table, behind which was
+another large chair of exactly the same pattern of high-backed dignity, and
+seated himself. Then he drew me down into a low chair beside him, and I
+lifted up my hands, removed my hat, and was at last come home from a huge
+and unreal world outside.
+
+As I sat and gazed from the dark room through a large old window, which was
+swung open on heavy hinges to allow the sap-scented breeze to drift in and
+fan the fire of lingering winter, out into an old garden with
+brick-outlined walks and climbing bare rose vines upon which was beginning
+to be poured the silver enchantment of a young moon, Uncle Cradd, in his
+deep old voice, which was like the notes given out by an ancient violin,
+began to read a chapter from his old Book which began with the exhortation,
+"Let brotherly love continue," and laid down a course of moral conduct that
+seemed so impossible that I sat spellbound to the last words, "Grace be
+with you all. Ahmen."
+
+Then I knelt beside father, with old Rufus close behind our chairs, and was
+for the first time in my life lifted on the wings of prayer and carried off
+up somewhere I hadn't been before. As Uncle Cradd's sonorous words of love
+and rejoicing over our return rolled forth in the twilight, I crouched
+against father's shoulder, and I think the spirit of my Grandmother
+Craddock, whom I had heard indulging in a Methodist form of vocal rejoicing
+which is called a shout, was about to manifest itself through me when I was
+brought to earth and to my feet by a long, protracted, and alarmed appeal
+sent forth in the voice of the Golden Bird.
+
+"Keep us and protect us through the night with Your grace. Ahmen! Why
+didn't you put those chickens out of the way of skunks and weasels, Rufus,
+you old scoundrel," rolled out Uncle Cradd's deep voice, dropping with
+great harmony from the sublime to the domestic.
+
+Then, with Rufus at my heels, I literally flew through the back door of the
+house towards the sound of distress that had come from that direction. In
+front of a rambling old barn, which was silvered by the crescent that hung
+over its ridge-pole, stood the chariot, and at its door, with Mr. G. Bird
+in his arms, I saw that man Adam.
+
+"He didn't recognize my first touch," came across the moonbeams in a voice
+as fluty as the original Pan's, and mingled with friendly chuckles and
+clucks from the entire Bird family as they felt the caress of long hands
+among them. I was so ruffled myself that I felt in need of soothing; so I
+came across the light and into the black shadow of the old coach.
+
+"Oh, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come!" I exclaimed.
+
+After my ardent exclamation of welcome to Pan I stood still for fear he
+would vanish into the moonlight, because with his litheness and the eerie
+locks of hair that even in the silvering radiance showed a note of crimson
+cresting over his ears, he looked exactly as if he had come out of the
+hollow in some oak-tree.
+
+"I thought you might feel that way about it," he answered me, or rather I
+think that is what he said, because he was crooning to me and the Ladies
+Bird at the same time, and with a mixture of epitaphs and endearments that
+I didn't care to untangle. "There, there, lovely lady, don't be scared; it
+is going to be all right," he soothed, as he lifted one of the fluffy
+biddies and tucked her under his arm.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad you think so," I claimed the remark by exclaiming, while
+she made her claim by a contented little cluck.
+
+"Now don't be bothered, sweetheart," he again said, as he picked up another
+of the Ladies Bird and turned towards the huge old tumble-down barn that
+was yawning a black midnight out into the gray moonlight. "Let's all go
+into the barn and settle down to live happily together ever after."
+
+"I think that will be lovely," I answered, while beautiful Mrs. Bird made
+her reply with a consenting cluck. I never supposed I would make an
+affirmative answer to a domestic proposal that was at least uncertain of
+intent, but then I also never dreamed of being in the position of guardian
+to eleven head of prize live stock, and I think anything I did or said
+under the circumstances was excusable.
+
+"Don't you want to come with me and bring the cock with you. Old Rufus
+wouldn't touch one of them for a gold rock," he asked, and I felt slightly
+aggrieved when I discovered that I was to know when I was being addressed
+by a lack of any term of endearment, though the caressing flutiness of
+Adam's voice was the same to me as to any one of the Ladies Leghorn.
+
+"Naw, Marster, chickens am my hoodoo. To tetch one makes my flesh crawl
+like they was walking on my grave, and if little Mis' will permit of me, I
+wanter git back to see to the browning of my muffins ginst the time Mas'
+Cradd rars at me fer his supper," and without waiting for the consent he
+had asked, old Rufus shuffled hurriedly back into the house.
+
+"I'll bring Mr. Golden Bird. I adore the creeps his feathers give me," I
+said as I reached in the coach and took the Sultan in my arms. He gave not
+a single note of remonstrance, but I suppose it was imagination that made
+me think that he fluffed himself into my embrace with friendly joy.
+
+"Come on, let's put them for to-night over in the feed-room. There, ladies,
+did you ever see a greater old barn than this?" As he spoke to us he led
+the way with four of the admiring and obedient Ladies, in his arms, while
+the fifth, who was I, followed him into the deep, purple, hay-scented
+darkness.
+
+"I never did see anything like it," I answered, while only one of the
+Leghorn ladies gave a sleepy cluck of assent to their part of the question.
+
+I really did have a thrill of pure joy in that old barn. It wasn't like
+anything I had ever seen before, and was as far removed from a garage as is
+a brown-hearted chestnut burr from a soufflé of maroons served on a silver
+dish. I could hear the moth-eaten string of steeds munching noisily over at
+one end of the huge darkness, and the odor that arose from their repast was
+of corn and not of suffocating gasoline. Tall weeds and long frames with
+teeth in them, which gave them the appearance of huge alligator mouths
+yawning from the dusk to snap me, pressed close on each side. Straps and
+ropes and harness were draped from the beams and along the walls, and the
+combined aroma of corn and hay and leather and horses seemed an inspiration
+to a lusty breath.
+
+"There, sweeties, is a nice smooth bin for you to go to bed on," said Adam
+as he set the Ladies Leghorn one by one from his arms on the edge of a long
+narrow box that was piled high with corn. "Now you stay here with them
+until I bring the rest. Put your Golden Bird down beside the biddies, and
+I'll bring the others to put on the other side of him to roost, and in the
+morning he can begin scratching for a happy and united family." With which
+command Pan disappeared into the purple darkness and left me alone in the
+snapping monster shadows with only the sleepy Golden Bird for company. The
+Bird shook himself after being deposited beside the half-portion of his
+family, puffed himself up, sank his long neck into his shoulders, and
+evidently went to sleep. I shivered up close to him and looked over my
+shoulder into the blackness behind the teeth and then didn't look again
+until I heard the soft pad of the weird leather shoes behind me.
+
+"Now all's shipshape for the night," said Pan as he spread out his armful
+of feathers into a bunchy line on the edge of the bin. "Just throw them
+about two double handfulls of mixed corn and wheat down in the hay litter
+on the floor at daybreak and keep them shut up and scratching until you are
+sure none of them are going to lay. From the red of their combs I judge
+they will all be laying in a few days."
+
+"At daybreak?" I faltered.
+
+"Yes; they ought to be got to work as soon as they hop off the roost,"
+answered Pan, as he spread a little more of the hay on the floor in front
+of the perch of the Bird family.
+
+"How do I know it--I mean daybreak?" I asked, with eagerness and
+hesitation both in my voice, as Pan started padding out through the
+monster-haunted darkness towards the square of silver light beyond the huge
+door. As I asked my question I followed close at his heels.
+
+"I'll be going through to Plunketts and I'll call you, like this." As we
+came from the shadows into the moonlight beside the coach, Adam paused and
+gave three low weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the
+sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung. "I'll call twice,
+and then you answer if you are awake. If not, I'll call again."
+
+"I'll be awake," I asserted positively. "Won't you--that is, must I fix--"
+
+"That's all for to-night, and good night," he answered me with a laugh that
+was as reedy as the brisk wind in the trees. In a second he was padding
+away from me into the trees beyond the garden as swiftly as I suppose
+jaguars and lithe lions travel.
+
+"Oh, don't you want some supper?" I called into the moonlight, even
+running a few steps after him.
+
+"Parched corn in my pocket--lambs," came fluting back to me from the
+shadows.
+
+"Supper am sarved, little Mis'," Rufus announced from the hack door, as I
+stood still looking and listening into the night.
+
+"Uncle Cradd," I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old
+gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming
+silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life,
+"who is that remarkable man?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Si Beesley? Spare rib, dear?" was his disappointing but hospitable, answer
+in two return questions to my anxious inquiries about the Pan who had come
+out of the woods at my need.
+
+"No; I mean--mean, didn't you call him Adam?"
+
+"Nobody knows. Now, William, a spare rib and a muffin is real nourishment
+after the nightingale's tongues and snails you've been living on for
+twenty-odd years, isn't it?" As he spoke Uncle Cradd beamed on father, who
+was eating with the first show of real pleasure in food since we had had to
+send Henri back to New York, after the crash, weeping with all his
+French-cook soul at leaving us after fifteen years' service.
+
+"I have always enjoyed that essay of Charles Lamb's on roast pig, Cradd,"
+answered father as he took a second muffin. "I know that Lamb used to bore
+you, Cradd, but honestly now, doesn't his materialism seem--"
+
+"Oh, Uncle Cradd, please tell me about that Adam man before you and father
+disappear into the eighteenth century," I pleaded, as I handed two cups of
+steaming coffee to Rufus to pass my two elderly savants.
+
+"There is nothing to tell, Nancy child," answered Uncle Cradd, with an
+indulgent smile as he peered at me over his glasses. "Upon my word,
+William, Nancy is the living image of mother when we first remember her,
+isn't she? You are very beautiful, my dear."
+
+"I know it," I answered hurriedly and hardly aware of what I was saying;
+"but I want to know where he came from, please, Uncle Cradd."
+
+"Well, as near as I can remember he came out of the woods a year ago and
+has been in and out helping about the farms here in Harpeth Valley ever
+since. He never eats or sleeps anywhere, and he's a kind of wizard with
+animals, they say. And, William, he does know his Horace. Just last week he
+appeared with a little leather-covered volume, and for four mortal hours
+we--"
+
+"They says dat red-haided peckerwoods goes to the devil on Fridays, and
+Mas' Adam he cured my hawgs with nothing but a sack full of green cabbage
+heads in January, he did," said Rufus, as he rolled his big black eyes and
+mysteriously shook his old head with its white kinks. "No physic a-tall,
+jest cabbage and a few turnips mixed in the mash. Yes, m'm, dey does go to
+the devil of a Friday, red-haided peckerwoods, dey does."
+
+"By the way, Cradd, I want you to see a little volume of the Odes I picked
+up in London last year. The dealer was a robber, and my dealer didn't want
+me to buy, but I thought of that time you and I--"
+
+"Not one of the Cantridge edition?"
+
+"Yes, and I want you--"
+
+During all the rest of supper I sat and communed with my own self while
+father and Uncle Cradd banqueted with the Immortals.
+
+Even after we went back into the low-ceilinged old living-room, which was
+now lighted by two candles placed close together on a wonderful old
+mahogany table before the fire, one of the dignified chairs drawn up on
+each side, with my low seat between, I was busily mapping out a course of
+action that was to begin with my dawn signal.
+
+"I'd like to get into the--trunk as soon as possible. There is something I
+want to look up in my chicken book," I said before I seated myself in the
+midst of one of the battles that raged around Ilium.
+
+"Nancy, my dear, you will find that Rufus has arranged your Grandmother
+Craddock's room for you, and Mary Beesley came over to see that all was in
+order," said Uncle Cradd, coming and taking my face into his long, lean old
+hands. "God bless you, my dear, and keep you in His care here in the home
+of your forefathers. Good-night!" After an absent-minded kiss from father I
+was dismissed with a Sanskrit blessing from somewhere in the valley of the
+Euphrates up into my bedroom in the valley of Old Harpeth.
+
+If I had discovered the shadow of tradition in the rest of the old house, I
+walked into the very depths of them as I entered the bedroom of my
+foremothers. Deep crimson coals of fire were in a squat fireplace, and a
+last smoldering log of some kind of fragrant wood broke into fragments and
+sent up a little gust of blue and gold flame as if in celebration of my
+arrival. There was the remnant of a candle burning on a small table beside
+a bed that was very near, if not quite, five feet high, beside which were
+steps for the purposes of ascension. All the rest of the room was in a blur
+of lavender-scented darkness, and I only saw that both side walls folded
+down and were lit with the deep old gables, through the open windows of
+which young moon rays were struggling to help light the situation for me.
+As I looked at that wide, puffy old bed, with a blur of soft colors in its
+quilt and the valance around its posts and tester, I suddenly became as
+utterly weary as a child who sees its mother's arms outstretched at
+retiring time. I don't know how I got out of my clothes and into my lace
+and ribbons, with only the flickering candle and the dying log to see by,
+but in less time than I ever could have dreamed might be consumed in the
+processes of going to bed I climbed the little steps and dived into the
+soft bosom of the old four-poster.
+
+"God bless me and keep me in His care here in my grandmother's bed," I
+murmured after the invocation of Uncle Cradd, and that is all I knew after
+the first delicious sink and soft huddling of my body between sheets that
+felt as if they must be rich silk and smelled of old lavender.
+
+And then came a dream--a most lovely dream. I was at the opera in Gale
+Beacon's box, and Mr. G. Bird was out on the stage singing that glorious
+coo in the aria in Saint-Saëns' "Samson and Delilah," and I was trying to
+answer him. Suddenly I was wide awake sitting up in a billowed softness,
+while moonlight of a different color was sifting in through the gable
+windows and the most lovely calling notes were coming in on its beams.
+Without a moment's hesitation I answered in about six notes of that Delilah
+song which was the only sound ready in my mind. Then I listened and I am
+not sure that I heard a reedy laugh under my window as just the two notes
+succeeding the ones I had given forth came in on the dawn beams. Then all
+was as still and quiet as the hush of midnight.
+
+In about two seconds I had vaulted forth from between the high posts,
+splashed into a funny old wooden tub bound together with brass rims,
+whirled my black mop into a knot, slipped into the modish boots, corduroys,
+and a linen smock, and was running out into the peculiar moon-dawn with the
+swiftness of a boy.
+
+But I was too late! The silver-moon sky was growing rosy over behind the
+barn as I peered about, and a mist was rolling away from between the trees,
+but not a soul in all the world was awake, and I was alone.
+
+"Did he call me?" I asked of myself under my breath. And the answer I got
+was from the Golden Bird, who sent a long, triumphant, eager "salutation to
+the dawn" from out the shadows of the barn.
+
+Eagerly I flew to him, and the minute I entered the apartment of the Bird
+family I discovered that I had been only half dreaming about my early
+morning opera. Pan had come and gone. Upon the door was pinned a piece of
+torn brown wrapping-paper upon which I found these penciled words:
+
+    Give them about two quarts of warm meal mash, into which you put
+    some ground turnips at noon. Better build about four nests in the
+    dark under the bin, and be sure to disinfect them by white-washing
+    inside and out. Put in clean hay. Dust all the beauties on their
+    heads and under their wings with wood ashes in which you put a
+    little of the powder you'll find in a piece of this paper in the
+    right-hand corner of the bin. They'll want a good feed of ground
+    grain at three o'clock. Get copperas from Rufus to put in their
+    water, and I'll let you know later what else to do. Salutations!
+
+    ADAM
+
+"I'm glad I got up so early if that's the day's program," I gasped to
+myself as I leaned against the bin from which the Golden Bird had already
+alighted and was commanding the Ladies Leghorn to descend--a command which
+they were obeying one at a time with outspread white wings that were
+handled with the height of awkwardness. "But I'll do it all if it kills
+me," I added, with my head up, as I began to scatter some of the big white
+grains that I knew to be corn and which, by lifting lids and peering into
+huge slanting top boxes set against the wall, I discovered along with a lot
+of other small brown seed stuff that I knew must be wheat. I was glad that
+I had remembered that Adam had called the room the feed-room so I had
+known where to look.
+
+It was so perfectly exciting to see all those fluffy white members of my
+family fortune scratching and clucking about my feet that I prolonged the
+process of the feeding by scattering only a few grains at a time until
+great shafts of golden morning sun were thrusting themselves in through the
+dim dusk and cobweb-veiled windows.
+
+"Morning, little Mis'! I axes yo' parding fer not having breakfast 'fore
+sun-up fer you, but they didn't never any Craddock ladies want theirn
+before nine o'clock before, they didn't," came Rufus's voice in solemn
+words of apology uttered in tones of serious reproof. As he spoke he stood
+as far from the door of the feed-room as possible and eyed the scratching
+Bird family with the deepest disapproval. "Feed-room ain't no place fer
+chickens; they oughter make they living on bugs and worms and sich."
+
+"These chickens are--are different, Rufus, and--and so am I," I answered
+him with dignity. "Call me when the gentlemen are ready to breakfast with
+me."
+
+"They talked until most daylight, and I knows 'em well enough to not cook
+fer 'em until after ten o'clock. They's gentlemen, they is." The tones of
+his voice were perfectly servile, though it was plain to see that his
+mental processes were not.
+
+"All right, I'll eat mine now, Rufus, and then I want you to get me a--a
+hammer and some nails. Also a bucket of whitewash," I said as I closed the
+door upon the Birds and preceded him to the house.
+
+"Oh, my Lawd-a-mussy!" he exclaimed as he dived into the refuge of the
+kitchen, completely routed, to appear with my breakfast upon his tray and
+with such dignity in his mien that it was pathetic. I was merciful while I
+consumed the meal which was an exact repetition of the supper of the ribs
+of the hog and muffins and coffee; then I threw another fit into him, to
+quote from Matthew at his worst in the way of diction.
+
+"Please set a bucket of the wood ashes from the living-room fire out at
+the barn for me, Rufus," I commanded him with pleasant firmness.
+
+"Yes, Madam," was the answer I got in a tone of cold despair. It was thus
+that the feud with my family traditions was established.
+
+"Also, Rufus, please bring the saw with the hammer and the nails," was my
+last hand-grenade as I departed out the back door to the barn. From the old
+clock standing against the wall in the back hall I discovered the hour to
+be exactly seven-thirty, and I felt that I had what would seem like a week
+ahead of me before the setting of the sun. However, I was wrong in my
+judgment, for time fairly fled from me, and it was nine o'clock by my
+platinum wrist-watch before I had more than got one very wobbly-looking box
+nailed together on the floor of the barn, and I was deep in both pride and
+exhaustion.
+
+"I knew I could do it, but I didn't believe it," I was remarking to myself
+in great congratulations when a shadow fell across the light from the door.
+I looked up and, behold, Mrs. Silas Beesley loomed up against the sun and
+seemed to shine with equal refulgence to my delighted eyes! In her hand she
+held a plate covered with a snowy napkin, and her blue eyes danced with
+delighted astonishment.
+
+"Well, well, Nancy!" she exclaimed, as she seated herself upon a bench by
+the door and began to fan herself with a corner of a snowy kerchief that
+crossed her ample bosom. "Looks like you have begun sawing and nailing at
+the Craddock family estate pretty early in the action though it's none too
+soon, and mighty glad I am to see you do it while there is still a little
+odd lumber left. I've always said that it's women folks that prop a family
+and it will soon tumble without 'em. I am so glad you've come, honeybunch,
+that tears are laughing themselves out of the corner of my eyes." This
+time the white kerchief was dabbed over the keen blue eyes.
+
+"Is it all--very--very bad, Mrs.--I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked, as I laid
+down my dull-toothed instrument for the dissection of the plank, and sank
+cross-legged on the barn floor in front of her.
+
+"Oh, it might be worse," she answered as she smiled again with resolution.
+"Rufus has eleven nice hogs and feed enough for them until summer, thanks
+to the help of Adam in tending the ten-acre river-bottom field, which they
+made produce more than any one else in the river bend got off of fifty.
+Nobody can take the house, because it is hitched on to you with entailment,
+and though the croppers have skimmed off all the cream of the land, the
+clay bottom of it is obliged to be yours. Now that you and William have
+come with a little money the fields can all be restored. Adam will help you
+like he did Hiram Wade down the road there. It only cost him about ten
+dollars to the acre.
+
+"But--but father and I--that is, Aunt Mary, you know father has lost all
+his property and Uncle Cradd assured us that--that there was plenty for us
+all at Elmnest," I said in a faltering tone of voice as a feeling of
+descending tragedy struck into my heart.
+
+"Cradd and Rufus have lived on hog, head, heels, and tail for over a year,
+with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for.
+I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with
+those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse
+sewed with gold thread with you. I said to Silas as he put out the lamp
+last night, 'The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the
+track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of
+which Moseby Craddock is one.' 'Why, she's so fine she can't eat eggs outen
+chickens that costs less than maybe a hundred dollars the dozen,' answered
+Silas to me as he put out the cat."
+
+"They cost eight hundred and fifty dollars and they are all I have got in
+the world. Father gave up everything, and I sold my clothes and the cars to
+buy back his library and--and the chickens," I said with the terror
+pressing still more heavily down upon me.
+
+"Well, I shouldn't call them chickens spilled milk. Just listen at 'em!"
+And just as we had arrived at the point of desperation in our conversation
+a diversion occurred in the way of two loud cacklings from the feed-room
+and the most ringing and triumphant crow that I am sure ever issued from
+the throat of a thoroughbred cock. "'Tain't possible for 'em to have laid
+this quick after traveling," said Aunt Mary, but she was almost as fleet as
+I was in her progress to the feed-room door. And behold!
+
+"Well, what do you think about that, right out of the crate just last
+night, no nests nor nothing!" she exclaimed as we both paused and gazed at
+two huge white eggs in hastily scratched nests beside the bin over which
+two of the very most lovely white Leghorn ladies were proudly standing and
+clucking, while between them Mr. G. Bird was crowing with such evident
+pride that I was afraid he would split his crimson throat. All the other
+white Birds were clucking excitedly as if issuing hen promissory notes upon
+their futures.
+
+"They're omens of good luck, bless the Lord, Honeybunch. Pick 'em right
+up!" exclaimed Mrs. Silas.
+
+"Oh, they are warm!" I cried as I picked the two treasures up with reverent
+hands and cuddled them against the linen of the smock over my breast in
+which my heart was beating high with excitement. And as I held them there
+all threat of life vanished never to return, no matter through what
+vicissitudes the Golden Bird family and I were to pass.
+
+"You can eat these, and next week you can begin to save for a setting as
+soon as you can get a hen ready. I'll lend you the first one of mine that
+broods," said Mrs. Silas as she took both the beautiful treasures into one
+of her large hands with what I thought was criminal carelessness, but
+didn't like to say so.
+
+"I've ordered a three-hundred-egg incubator for them," I said proudly, as I
+gently took the warm treasures back into my hand. "Incubators are so much
+more sanitary and intelligent than hens," I added with all the surety of
+the advertisement for the mechanical hen which I had answered with
+thirty-five dollars obtained from the sale of the last fluffy petticoat I
+had hoped to retain, but which I gave up gladly after reading the
+advertisement. Two most lovely chemises had gone for the two brooders that
+were to accompany the incubator, and it seemed hard to think that I would
+have to wait ten days to receive the fruits of my feminine sacrifice from
+the slow shipping service of the railroad.
+
+"Don't ever say that again, Nancy! Hens have more genuine wisdom growing
+at the roots of their pin feathers than most women display during the span
+of their entire lives, and they make very much better mothers," reproved
+Aunt Mary, with sweet firmness. "Just you wait and see which brings out
+your prize birds, the wooden box or the hen. When men invent something with
+a mother's heart, they had better name it angel and admit that the kingdom
+has come. Bless my soul; these biscuits I brought over for you-all's
+breakfast are stone-cold!"
+
+"I've had my breakfast a half a day ago," I answered. "You go in and start
+father and Uncle Cradd off with the biscuits while I finish the nest
+and--and do some more things for my family fortune."
+
+"Child, if you attempt to do the things that Adam wants you to do for and
+with live stock you may see miracles being hatched out and born, but you'll
+be too worn out to notice 'em. Trap nests indeed! I've got to have some
+time to make my water waves and offer daily prayer!" And with this
+ejaculation of good-natured indignation, evidently at the memory of sundry
+and various poultry prods, Mrs. Silas betook herself to the house with a
+beautiful and serene dignity. As she went she stopped to break a sprig from
+a huge old lilac that was beginning to burst its brown buds and to put up
+half a yard of rambler that trailed across the path with its treacherous
+thorns.
+
+"Your lilacs are breaking scent already," she called back to me over her
+shoulder.
+
+A woman can experience no greater sensation of joy than that which she
+feels when she first realizes that she is the mistress of a lilac bush.
+Neither her début dance nor her first proposal of sentiment equals it. It
+is the same way about the first egg she gathers with her own hands; the
+sensation is indescribable.
+
+"I'll do all the things he says do for you and the family, Mr. G. Bird, if
+it kills me, as it probably will," I said with resolution as I drove a
+last wobbly nail into the first nest, and took up the saw to again attack
+the odds and ends of old plank I had collected on the barn floor. "If I can
+make one nest in two hours, I can make two more in four more, and then I
+will have time for the rest of the things," I assured myself as I again
+looked at my wrist-watch, and began to saw with my knee holding the tough
+old plank in place across a rickety box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It is beautiful how sometimes deserving courage is rewarded if it just goes
+on deserving long enough. After about an hour's hand-to-saw bout with the
+old plank I was just chewing through the last inch of the last of the four
+sides of nest number two when I suddenly stopped and listened. Far away to
+the front of the house I heard hot oaths being uttered by the engine in a
+huge racing-machine with a powerful chug with which I was quite familiar.
+While I listened, the motor in agony gave a snort as it bounded over some
+kind of obstruction and in two seconds, as I stood saw in hand, with not
+enough time to wipe the sweat of toil from my brow, the huge blue machine
+swept around the corner of the house, brought up beside the family coach,
+which was still standing in front of the barn, and Matthew flung himself
+out of it and to my side.
+
+"Holy smokers, Ann, but you look good in that get-up!" he exclaimed as he
+regarded me with the delight with which a person might greet a friend or
+relative whom he had long considered dead or lost. "Why, you look just as
+if you had stepped right out of the 'Elite Review.' And the saw, too, makes
+a good note of human interest."
+
+"Well, it's chicken interest and not human, Matthew Berry," I said,
+answering his levity with spirit. "And I'm sorry I can't be at home for
+your amusement to-day, but my chickens are laying while I wait, and the
+least I can do is to get these nests ready for 'em. You'll excuse me, won't
+you, and go in to talk with father and Uncle Cradd?"
+
+"They're not producing dividends already, are they, Ann? Why, you only
+started the Consolidated Egg Co. yesterday!" exclaimed Matthew, with
+insulting doubt of my veracity in his voice.
+
+"Look there!" I said, as I pointed to my two large pearls, which I had
+carefully put in the soft felt hat I had purchased to go with the smocks
+for fifteen dollars at Goertz's.
+
+"Well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed Matthew, with real
+astonishment, as he sat down on his heels and took the two treasures into
+his highly manicured hands. "Gee, they are right hot off the bat!" he
+exclaimed, as he detected some of the warmth still left in them, I suppose.
+
+"Yes, and I've got to get these nests done right away so as to be ready to
+catch the rest of them," I said and began to saw furiously, as if I were
+constructing a bucket to catch a deluge.
+
+"Say, gimme the saw, Ann, and you get the fodder and things to put in the
+bottom of them to keep them from smashing as they come," said Matthew, as
+he flung off his coat, jammed his motor-cap on the back of his head, and
+took the saw from my unresisting hand.
+
+"I'll get the whitewash and whiten them as you finish them," I said, as I
+hurriedly consulted the torn piece of wrapping-paper I took from one of
+the huge pockets of my smock.
+
+"All right, but you had better hump yourself, for I believe I'm going to be
+some carpenter. This saw has a kind of affinity feeling to my hand," said
+Matthew, as he put his foot on one end of the plank and began to make the
+saw fly through the wood like a silver knife through fluffy cake. If saws
+were the only witnesses, the superiority of men over women would be
+established in very short order. "And say, Ann, I wish you would be
+thinking what you are going to charge for a half interest in this business.
+Law and real estate look slow to me after these returns right before my
+eyes," he added, as he stopped to move the pearl treasures farther out of
+the way of a possible flying plank.
+
+"I'm going to give you one of them to take home with you, Matt," I
+answered, with a most generous return of his appreciation of these
+foundation pebbles of my family fortune. Then I went to appeal to Rufus for
+the whitewash.
+
+"They's a half barrel uf lime and a bucket and bresh in the corner uf the
+barn what Mas' Adams made me git, he did; but it's fer the hawgs and can't
+be wasted on no chickens," he said, answering my very courteous request
+with a great lack of graciousness.
+
+"The chickens will pay it back to the hogs, Rufus," I answered airily as I
+ran back to the barn, eager for the fray.
+
+And a gorgeous fray it was, with Matthew whistling and directing and
+pounding and having the time of his very frivolous life.
+
+Now, of course, nobody in these advanced times thinks that it is not
+absolutely possible, even easy, for a woman to live any kind of
+constructive life she chooses entirely without assistance from a man, but
+she'll get to the place she has started for just about a year after she
+would have arrived if a man had happened along to do the sawing. The way my
+friend Matthew Berry cut and hammered off one by one the directions on that
+piece of paper in my smock pocket would have proved the proposition above
+stated to any doubtful woman. And while Matthew and I had had many happy
+times together at balls and parties and dinners and long flights in our
+cars and at the theatre and opera, also in dim corners in gorgeous clothes,
+I am sure we had never been so happy as we were that morning while we
+labored together in the interest of Mr. G. Bird and family. We went beyond
+the paper directions and delved in my book and hammered away until, when
+Rufus, with stately coldness, announced some time after noon that dinner
+was served, we both declared that it was impossible, though Matthew was at
+that moment performing the last chore commanded by dusting the medicated
+ashes under the last wing of the last Lady Leghorn, held tenderly in my
+arms. The mash had been concocted and heated in the cleansed whitewash
+bucket over a fire improvised by Matthew between two stones beside the
+barn, because I did not dare disturb Rufus again, and the model nests were
+all in place and ready for the downpour of pearls that we expected at any
+time, and there was nothing left to do that we could think of or read about
+in the book.
+
+"Let's go in and get a bite with Father Craddock and the twin, and then
+we'll read things to do this afternoon in the book where you got those
+directions," said Matthew as he started towards the house in the wake of
+Rufus' retiring apron.
+
+I hadn't broken Pan to Matthew, and I didn't know exactly why. Perhaps I
+didn't quite believe in the red-headed Peckerwood myself just then, and
+felt unable to incarnate him to Matthew.
+
+Uncle Cradd's welcome to Matthew was very stately and friendly when we went
+in and found him and father in their high-back chairs on each side of the
+table, waging the classic argument that Rufus had reported them to have
+discontinued at an early hour of the morning. Father was delighted with the
+package of books that Matthew had brought out with him in his car, because
+father considered them too valuable to be transported in the wagon which
+was to bring the rest of the library.
+
+"Just a little of the cream of the collection, Cradd," he said as he
+unwrapped a small leather-covered volume which Matthew had transported in
+the pocket over his heart.
+
+"Just five hundred dollars' worth of cream," whispered Matthew to me, with
+a whimsical look at the small and very ancient specimen of Americana. "It
+is a good thing that Senator Proctor has only Belle and let her have the
+six thousand cash for the Chauvenaise, and Bess wanted your little Royal in
+a hurry, though she got a bargain at that. Still the library is really
+worth five times what you paid."
+
+"Sh--hush!" I said as I led the way before the parental twins into the old
+dining-room. Father hadn't even questioned how he was to have the library
+saved for him, and of course Uncle Cradd knew nothing at all about the
+matter.
+
+After seating me with the same ceremony he had employed since my arrival
+into the family, though with hostility bristling psychologically for my
+plebeian intrusion into his traditions of the Craddock ladies, Rufus
+appalled me by offering me for the third time since my arrival at Elmnest
+roasted ribs of the hog, muffins and coffee. Only my training in the social
+customs of a world beyond the ken of Rufus kept me from exclaiming with
+protest, but I came to myself to discover that Matthew was devouring huge
+slabs of the roasted bones and half a dozen batches of the corn bread in a
+manner that was ravenously unconventional. I remembered that the last time
+I had seen him at repast, just about forty-eight hours past, he had speared
+a croquette of chicken with disdain, and I decided not to apologize for the
+meal even in the most subtle way. Also the spectacle of father polishing
+off the small bones, when I remembered the efforts of devoted Henri to
+tempt his appetite with sophisticated food, filled me with a queer
+primitive feeling that made it possible for me to fall upon my series of
+the ribs with an ardor which I had thought I was incapable of.
+
+"I call that some food," sighed Matthew, as he regarded the pile of bones
+in his plate with the greatest satisfaction in his appeased eyes. I felt
+Rufus melt behind me as he passed the muffins again.
+
+"The native food of the Harpeth Valley nourishes specially fine men--and
+very beautiful women," answered Uncle Cradd, with a glance of pride, first
+at me and then at father in his spare, but muscular, uprightness and
+finally at Matthew, with his one hundred and eighty pounds of brawn packed
+on his six-foot skeleton in the most beautiful lines and curves of strength
+and distinction.
+
+"Oh, that reminds me, Mr. Craddock, and you, too, Father of Ann," said
+Matthew, as he reached into his pocket and hurriedly drew out a huge
+letter. "I have a proposition that came to the firm this morning to talk
+over with you two gentlemen. Ann thought I came out to help her settle the
+Bird family comfortably, and for a while I forgot and thought so too, but
+now I'll have to ask you two gentlemen to talk business, though I must
+confess the matter puzzles me not a little."
+
+"The art of dining and the craft of business should never be commingled;
+let us repair to the library," said Uncle Cradd, thus placing the spare
+ribs in an artistic atmosphere and at the same time aiming an arrow of
+criticism, though unconscious, at the custom of the world out over Paradise
+Ridge of feeding business conditions down the throat of an adversary with
+his food and drink, specially drink.
+
+"I don't know why, but I'm scared to death now that I'm up against it,"
+Matthew confided to me as he first took a legal-looking piece of paper from
+his pocket and then hastily put it back as he and I followed the parental
+twins down the hall and into the library.
+
+"Will you rescue me, Ann?" he whispered as he ceremoniously seated me in
+my low chair and took a straight one beside father as Uncle Cradd stood
+tall, huge and towering on the old home-woven rug before the small fire in
+the huge rock chimney.
+
+"Yes," I answered as I settled back in the little chair and took one
+passionately delighted look around the old room, which I was seeing in the
+broad light of day for the first time. I am glad that the old home which
+had been the stronghold of my foremothers and fathers was thus revealed to
+me in half lights and a little at a time; I couldn't have stood the ecstasy
+of it all at once. The room was the low-beamed old wonder that I had felt
+it to be in the candle-light the night before, only now the soft richness
+of the paneling, which held back into the gloom the faded colors of the
+books that lined the walls, the mellowed glow of the rough stone of the
+chimney, and the faded hand-woven rugs on the floor made it all look like
+one of Rembrandt's or Franz Hals' canvases. But in a few seconds I came
+back from the joy of it to a consciousness of what Matthew Berry was
+saying.
+
+"You see," he was explaining with enthusiasm, "that this new form of office
+for the state commissioner of agriculture is really a part of the great
+program of preparedness that has been evolving here in America since the
+Great War began, and nobody knows just what to expect of it as yet. The
+request from the President for the appointment of Evan Baldwin to take the
+portfolio in the State of Harpeth has made everybody see that the President
+means business with the States, and that America is to be made to produce
+her own food and the food of the rest of the world that needs it. When a
+scientist like Baldwin, worth millions and with experiment stations of
+hundreds of acres in most states in the Union, which are coining more
+millions with their propagation output, steps out and stands shoulder to
+shoulder with Edison in working to get the United States prepared to feed
+the world as well as to fend off any of that world that menaces it, the
+rest of us have got to get up and hustle, some with a musket and some with
+a plow."
+
+"And some with an egg-basket," I added, as my cheeks began to glow with
+something I hadn't ever felt before, but which I classified as patriotism.
+
+"My country has only to call us and we'll answer to the whole of our
+kingdom, William and I. We were lads too young to carry muskets against her
+in the Civil war, but we, with Rufus, plowed these acres with children's
+strength, and the larger portion of our products went to feed hungry
+soldiers both blue and gray. I say, just let my country call William and
+me!" As Uncle Cradd spoke, his back straightened, and I saw that he must
+have been every inch of six feet three in his youth. "William?"
+
+"With you, Cradd," answered father quietly, and I felt that that formula
+was the one by which they had lived their joint youth.
+
+"Well, that is about what they are asking of you, Mr. Craddock," said
+Matthew, his cheeks red with the glow of the blood Uncle Cradd had called
+up in his enthusiastic heart. "The new State secretary of agriculture has
+asked our firm to undertake negotiations for the purchase of Elmnest, for a
+recruiting station for the experts who are to take over the organizing of
+the farming interests in the Harpeth Valley, which is the central section
+of the State of Harpeth. They offer three hundred dollars an acre for the
+whole tract of two hundred acres, despite the fact that some of it is worn
+almost to its subsoil. They consider that as valuable, because they wish to
+give demonstrations and try experiments in land restoration, though very
+little of that is needed here in the valley. It's a pretty big thing, Mr.
+Craddock and Father William, sixty thousand dollars will provide all the--"
+
+"Did I understand that this proposition is put to us in the form of a
+demand of our Government upon our patriotism?" asked Uncle Cradd in a
+booming voice, while father only looked uncertain and ready to say, "With
+you, Cradd." I sat speechless for a moment, with a queer pain in my heart
+that I did not for the first second understand.
+
+"Well, not exactly that, Mr. Craddock, but something like it in a--"
+Matthew was beginning to say in a judicial way.
+
+"That is enough, Matthew Berry, son of the friend of my youth. If the
+United States needs Elmnest for national defenses, I am willing to give it
+up--indeed insist on presenting it to the Government except for a small
+part of the sum mentioned, which is needed for the simple and declining
+lives of my brother William, Rufus, and me, and my niece Nancy. Will you so
+convey our answer, William?"
+
+"With you, Cradd," came the devoted formula with which father slipped back
+finally into the dependence of his youth.
+
+"Good, Mr. Craddock," exclaimed Matthew, and I could see visions of Ann
+Craddock reclaimed from her farmer's smock in a ball-gown upon the floor
+of the country club in the fleeting glance of triumph he gave me. "Of
+course, about the price--"
+
+Then in that counsel of the mighty arose Ann Craddock, farm woman in the
+stronghold of her worn-out acres.
+
+"Is it or is it not true, Uncle Cradd, that no deed to this property can be
+made without my consent?" I asked calmly.
+
+"Why, yes, Nancy," answered Uncle Cradd, indulgently. "But this is a matter
+for your father and me to decide for you. I am sure you cannot fail in
+patriotism, my child."
+
+"I don't," I answered. "I am going to be more patriotic than any woman ever
+was before. I am not going to sell my Grandmother's rosebushes in their
+gardens or the acres that have nourished my family since its infancy in
+America long before this Evan Baldwin ever had any family, I feel sure, for
+sixty thousand dollars to go back and sit down in a corner with. I am going
+to demonstrate to the United States what one woman can do in the way of
+nutriment production aided by one beautiful rooster and ten equally
+beautiful hens, and when they begin to take stock of the resources of this
+Government, we women of the Harpeth Valley will be there with our
+egg-baskets. Just take that answer to your Mr. Evan Baldwin, Matthew Berry,
+and I'll never forgive you for this insult."
+
+"Nancy!" ejaculated Uncle Cradd with stern amazement.
+
+"Can't do a thing with her when she looks like that, Cradd," said father,
+as he comfortably lighted a cigar and drew the small leather-covered book
+towards him with hungry fingers.
+
+"Now, Ann," began Matthew, in the soothing tone of voice he had seen fail
+on me many times, "you don't understand entirely, and your situation is
+pretty desperate in--"
+
+"I do, I do understand that when I refuse this offer I am assuming enormous
+obligations, Matthew Berry," I answered, with my head in the air and
+absolute courage in my heart.
+
+"I ask you to bear witness, Matthew, to what my answer to the demand of my
+country would have been if I alone could have answered, but Nancy is within
+her rights, and I protect the rights of a woman before those of any man,"
+said Uncle Cradd, and there was not a trace of relief in his fine old face
+that he was to be saved from a parting with the land that had been the love
+of his life, but one of affectionate regard and admiration for me. "Also
+say to the secretary of agriculture that a Craddock woman is as good as her
+word, and that the Harpeth Valley can be depended upon to lead the United
+States in the production of eggs in--when shall I promise, Nancy?"
+
+"About--about a year," I answered, searching in my mind for some data from
+the huge red book as to when wealth from the hen could be expected to roll
+in in response to the "good management" I felt even then capable of
+displaying. Even now I can't blame myself for over-confidence when I think
+of the two white pearls in my hat on the table beside father's book.
+
+"Better make it two," advised Matthew cautiously, but with a gleam of
+enthusiasm as he also glanced at the eggs. That gleam was what earned my
+forgiveness for his daring to come upon me with such a mission.
+
+"Say eighteen months. That will be the end of the second season," I
+answered with decision. "And it is about time for me to give the last
+feeding of my hostages to the United States and Mr. Evan Baldwin. You'll
+excuse me, Matthew?" I asked politely, but cruelly, for I knew he intended
+to follow me immediately.
+
+"Now here is your line of dispute, Cradd, just as I said," exclaimed
+father, who had opened his leather treasure and been hunting through its
+pages even before my heroics had completely exploded. And before Matthew
+and I had left the room, they were off on a bat with some favorite Ancient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Of course, Ann, you _do_ realize just what you are doing?" asked Matthew
+of me, as we walked on the moss-green flagstones back to the barn, and his
+voice was so sweet and gentle with solicitude that I felt I must answer him
+seriously and take him into my confidence. Affection is a note that one
+must always make payment on.
+
+"Yes, Matt, I do realize that those two are in a way children, for whose
+maintenance I have made myself responsible, and my mind is scared to death,
+but my heart is beating so high with courage that I can hardly stand it."
+
+"Oh, come with me, Ann, and let me--" Matthew wooed.
+
+"Matt," I answered gravely, "I haven't been here twenty-four hours yet, but
+when the thought of having it all taken away came to me, something in me
+rose and made me rage, rage, as I did in the house. I don't know what it
+is, but there is something in this low old farm-house, this tumble-down old
+barn, that leafless old garden with its crumbling brick walks, and these
+neglected, worn-out old acres, which seems to--to feed me and which I know
+I would perish without. Oh, please understand and--and help me a little
+like you did this morning," I ended with a broken plea, as I stretched out
+my hand to him just as I entered the door of my barn--castle of dreams for
+the future.
+
+"Dear Lord, the pluck of women!" Matthew exclaimed reverently, down in his
+throat. "I'll be here, Ann, whenever you want me, and if you say that
+chickens must fill my future life, then chickens it shall be," he added,
+rising to the surface of the question again.
+
+"Oh, Matt, you are a darling, and I--" I was exclaiming when a soft voice
+from out of the shadows of the barn interrupted me and an apple-blossom in
+the shape of a girl drifted into the late afternoon sunlight from the
+direction of the feed-room.
+
+"I'm Polly Beesley, and mother sent these eggs to scramble with the ones
+you got this morning for supper," she said in a low voice that was
+positively fragrant with sweetness. Two huge plaits of corn-silk hair fell
+over her shoulders, and her eyes were as shy and blue as violets were
+before they became a large commercial product. Her gingham dress was cut
+with decorum just below her shoe-tops and, taking into consideration the
+prevailing mode, its length, fullness, and ruffles made the slim young
+thing look like a picture from the same review from which I had cut my
+smocks. However, I am sure that if she had been at the between six and
+eighteen age year before last, when about two and a half yards of gingham
+would have been modish for her costume, she would still have been attired
+in the voluminous ruffles.
+
+"Holy smokes," I thought I heard Matthew gurgle, and I felt him start at
+the apparition, though the young thing never so much as glanced in his
+direction as she tendered me a quaint little basket in which lay half a
+dozen eggs, real homely brown eggs and not pearl treasures.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Polly dear," I answered with enthusiasm, and in obedience
+to some urge resulting from the generations ahead of Polly and my
+incarnation in the atmosphere of Riverfield, my lips met the rosy ones that
+were held up to me. I felt sorry for Matthew, and I couldn't restrain a
+glance of mischief at him that crossed his that were fixed on the yellow
+braids.
+
+"I didn't believe it of this day and generation," I heard him mutter as I
+presented him to Polly, who answered that she was "pleased to make his
+acquaintance," in a voice in which terror belied the sentiment expressed.
+
+In her eyes traces of that same terror remained until suddenly the Golden
+Bird stepped proudly out of the bushes with the Ladies Bird, clucking and
+scratching along behind him. He had led the family out into the pasture
+and was now wisely returning them to the barn before the setting of the
+sun. I thought I had never seen him look so handsome, and no wonder his
+conquest was immediate.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful," exclaimed Polly, while all restraint left her young
+face and body as she fell on her knees before the Sultan. "Chick, chick,
+chick," she wooed, in the words that Pan had used to command, and with a
+delight equal to hers in the introduction, the Bird came toward her. "Oh,
+please, sir, Mr.--Mr. Berry, get me some corn quick--quick! I want to
+squeeze him once," she demanded of Matthew, confident where she had before
+been fearful. His response was long-limbed and enthusiastic, so that in a
+few seconds Mr. G. Bird stood pecking grains from her hand. The spectacle
+was so lovely that I was not at all troubled by twinges of jealousy, but
+enjoyed it, for even at that early moment I think I felt a mercenary
+interest in seeing the friendship between the Golden Bird and the
+Apple-Blossom sealed. In her I psychologically scented an ally, and I
+enjoyed the hug bestowed upon him fully as much or even more than he did.
+It was a lovely picture that the kiddie made as she knelt at our feet with
+the white fluff balls and wings whirring and clucking around her.
+
+"Yes; let's go into the chicken business, Ann," said Matthew, as his eyes
+danced with artistic pleasure. "You love 'em, don't you, Miss--Miss
+Corn-tassel?" he asked, with teasing delight in his voice as well as in his
+eyes.
+
+"Yes sir," she answered as she looked up at him merrily, all fear of him
+gone.
+
+"Say, what do you think of going into the business with your Uncle Matthew
+if Ann refuses to sell a half interest in hers to me?" he asked of her in
+his jolly booming voice, with a smile many inches wide across his face.
+"I'll put up the capital, you put up the work, and we'll take all the
+prizes away from Ann."
+
+"I don't want to take the prizes from Miss Ann. I'd rather have Reds so we
+could both get ribbons," she answered as she dimpled up at me as
+affectionately as if she had tagged at my gingham skirts at our sixth and
+second years.
+
+"Reds it shall be, Corn-tassel, and I'll be back with them as soon as an
+advertisement in the daily papers can find them for me. I'll start the
+search right now," said Matthew, teasing the kiddie as if he had known her
+all his life, but with an expression turning to the genuine poultry
+business enthusiasm. "You and Ann come on down to the gate with me in the
+car and we'll talk--"
+
+But just here an interruption occurred in the way of a hoarse squawk coming
+from around the corner of the house. Hastily my eye called the roll of the
+Ladies of Leghorn and found them all present just as the tall young farmer
+whose ears had cooled down the day before over at Riverfield enough to let
+him admire the Golden Bird and family appeared around from behind the huge
+lilac at the corner of the house. He was attired as yesterday in the
+beautiful dull-blue overall and jacket; his hair was the color of Polly's
+and shocked from under the edges of a floppy gray hat, and in his arms he
+carried a large hen the identical color of Pan's head.
+
+"Howdy, Miss Nancy," he said in a voice as shy as Polly's, and his eyes
+were also as blue and shy as hers. He looked right through Matthew until I
+introduced them, then he shifted the hen and shook hands with Polly's
+"Pleased to make your acquaintance" greeting.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Beesley," said Matthew, exerting more charm of
+manner than I had ever seen him use before. "My, but that is a gorgeous
+bird you have!"
+
+"She's a right good hen, but she's a mongrel. There isn't a single
+thoroughbred Rhode Island Red hereabouts. I aim to get a setting of pure
+eggs for Polly this spring if I sell my hawgs as good as Mr. Adam perdicks
+I will. I brought her as a present to you, Miss Nancy, 'cause she's been
+a-brooding about two days, and if you get together a setting of eggs the
+last of next week she'll hatch 'em all. She carried three broods last
+year."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Beesley, how lovely of you," I exclaimed, as I reached out my arms
+for the gorgeous old red ally. "I like her better than any present I ever
+had in all my life!" This I said before the face of Matthew Berry, with a
+complete loss of memory of all of the wonderful things he had been giving
+me from my début bouquet of white orchids and violets to the tiny scarab
+from the robe of an Egyptian princess that I wore in the clasp of my
+platinum wrist-watch.
+
+"Well, I should say!" Matthew exclaimed, with not a thought of the
+comparison in his generous mind. "Did you know that your sister, Miss
+Polly, and I are going into the Rhode Island Red business together? We were
+just deciding the details as you came around the house. What do you say to
+coming in? How many shall I buy? Say, about fifty hens and half a dozen
+cocks? Let's start big while we are about it. If Ann is going to make
+three thousand dollars a year off one rooster and ten hens, we can make
+fifteen off of five times as many."
+
+"Yes, and we can bust the business all to pieces with too much stock,"
+answered the brother Corn-tassel. "Miss Nancy has got real horse-sense
+starting small, and chicken-sense too."
+
+"I stand corrected," answered Matthew. "I see that a flyer cannot be taken
+in chickens any higher than a hen can fly. I'm growing heady over this
+business and must go back to town to set the wheels in motion. All of you
+ride down to the gate with me and find out what the word jolt means."
+
+Then after housing the Bird family in the feed-room with their guest, all
+happily at scratch in the hay for the wheat and corn thrown to them by the
+Corn-tassels while Matthew and I went in to bid the paternal twins good-by,
+we all rode merrily and joltily down the long avenue under the old elms to
+the big gate at the square in Riverfield. In front of the
+post-office-bank-grocery emporium we deposited the Corn-tassels, introduced
+Matthew to Aunt Mary and Uncle Silas, with the most cordial results on both
+sides, and then turned in the car out the Riverfield ribbon instead of in.
+
+"Just a spin will do you good, sweet thing," said Matthew, as I settled
+down close enough to his shoulder to talk and not interrupt the powerful
+engine. "I want you to myself for a small moment away from your live stock,
+human and inhuman."
+
+"Oh, Matt, there is nobody just like you and you have made this
+day--possible," I said as I snuggled down into the soft cushions.
+
+"Honestly, Ann, do you mean positively that you don't want me--now?" he
+asked me as he sent the car whirling into the sun setting over Old Harpeth.
+
+"Not--now," I answered bravely, though I nestled a little closer to him. He
+seemed so good and strong and--certain.
+
+"All right then, I'll take the next best and I'll come in to your farm
+circle as partner or competitor or any old thing that keeps me in your
+aura. I'll grow chickens with the Corn-tassels or--here we turn back for I
+want to get out again over that bit of mountain-path that leads to your
+citadel before twilight."
+
+"Put me out at the gate, Matt. I want to walk up," I said, and held to it
+against his protest. I finally made him see that I really was not equal to
+another "rocking" over the road, and I stood and watched him drive the huge
+car away from me down the Riverfield ribbon.
+
+"I'm afraid I love him and just don't know it," I said to myself, as I
+stood at the big gate and watched him going away from me into life as I had
+known it since birth until twenty-four hours past. And from that vision of
+my past I turned in the sunset light of the present and began to walk
+slowly up the long avenue into my future. "I've never known anything but
+dancing and motoring and being happy, and how could that teach any woman
+what love is?" I queried as I stopped and picked up a small yellow flower
+out of a nest of green leaves that some sort of ancestral influence must
+have introduced to me as dandelion, for I had never really met one before.
+I felt a pale reflection of the glow I had experienced when I took the two
+warm pearls in my hands in the morning.
+
+Then suddenly something happened that thrilled me first with interest and
+then with--I don't know what to call it, but it was not fear. A fierce
+little wind, that was earthy and sweet, but strong, ruffled across my path
+and up into the tops of the elms, and with a bit of fury tore down an old
+bird's-nest and flung it at my feet. It was soft and downy with bits of fur
+and hair and wool inside, but it was all rent in two.
+
+"I wonder if I can hold my Elmnest steady on the limb when--" I was saying
+to myself unsteadily, with a mist in my eyes for the small wrecked home,
+when from somewhere over my left shoulder there came Pan's reedy call, and
+it ended with the two Delilah notes that I had thought I heard in the early
+morning. It was with no will of my own that I answered with that coo which
+I had heard Mr. G. Bird singing on the stage of the Metropolitan in my dawn
+dream. Also I crashed rapidly through the bushes in the direction of the
+call that this time came imperatively and without the coo.
+
+"To your left and then straight toward the oak-tree," came human words from
+Pan in quick command and direction. "Hurry!"
+
+With a last struggle with the briars I broke out into a small open space
+under the spreading branches of the old oak and upon a scene of tragedy,
+that is, it was almost tragedy, for the poor old sheep was lying flat with
+pathetic inertia while Adam stood over her with something in his arms.
+
+"It's the fine Southdown ewe I persuaded Rufus to trade for one of the
+precious hogs," he said, with not so much as a word of greeting or interest
+personal to me in his voice or glance, but with such wonderful tenderness
+that I came close to him because I couldn't resist it. "She dropped twin
+lambs last night and she is down with exhaustion. They are getting cold,
+and I want to take her right up to the barn where I can bed her on hay and
+get something hot into all three. Can you cuddle the lambs and carry them
+while I shoulder her?" As he spoke he held out his armful to me without
+wounding me by waiting for my consent.
+
+"Oh, the poor, cold babies!" I exclaimed, as I lifted the skirt of my long,
+fashionable, heavy linen smock and wrapped them in it and my arms, close
+against my warm solar plexus, which glowed at their soft huddling. One tiny
+thing reached out a little red tongue and feebly licked my bare wrist, and
+I returned the caress of introduction with a kiss on its little snowy,
+woolly head.
+
+"You've the lovesome hand with the beasties," said Pan as he smiled down on
+the lambs and me.
+
+[Illustration: A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while
+Adam stood over her with something in his arms]
+
+"I like 'em because they make me sorter grow inside some place, I don't
+know exactly where," I answered as I adjusted my woolly burden for what I
+knew would seem a long march. "I'll get 'em to the barn all right," I
+assured their first friend, who was now bending over the poor mother. "This
+is what I took Russian ballet dancing and played golf for, only I didn't
+know it."
+
+"You'd have executed more Baskt twists and done more holes a day if you had
+known," said Adam, with beautiful unbounded faith in me, as he braced his
+legs far apart and lifted the limp mother sheep up across his back and
+shoulder. It seemed positively weird to be standing there acting a scene
+out of Genesis and mentioning Baskt, and I was about to say so when Pan
+started on ahead through the bushes and commanded me briefly to: "Come on!"
+
+At his heels I toiled along with the sheep babies hugged close to my breast
+until at last we deposited all three on a bed of fragrant hay in a corner
+of the barn.
+
+"What'll I feed 'em?" I questioned anxiously. "There isn't a bit of any
+kind of food on this place but the ribs of a hog and a muffin and a cup of
+coffee."
+
+"We'll give her a quart of hot water with a few drops of this heart
+stimulant I have in my pocket, and she'll do the rest for the family as
+soon as she warms up. She's got plenty of milk and needs to have it drawn
+badly. There you are--go to it, youngsters. She is revived by just being
+out of the wind and in the warmth, and I don't believe she needs any
+medicine. She wouldn't let them to her udder if she wasn't all right. Now
+we can leave them alone for a time, and I'll give her a warm mash in a
+little while." As he spoke Adam calmly walked away from the interesting
+small family, which was just beginning a repast with great vigor, and
+paused at the feed-room door. With more pride than I had ever felt when
+entering a ball-room with a Voudaine gown upon me and a bunch of orchids, I
+followed and stood at his side.
+
+"Well, how do you do, sweeties, and where did you get this model hen-house?
+Trap nests! I wouldn't have believed it of you!" said Adam to the Leghorn
+family and me inclusive.
+
+"I didn't do it all," I faltered as I experienced a terrific temptation to
+lie silently and claim all of the affectionate praise that was beaming from
+Pan's eyes upon all of us, but I fought and conquered it with nobility.
+"Matthew Berry came out and did about--no, a little more than half of it.
+But I did all I could," I added, with a pathetic appeal for his
+approbation.
+
+"Well, half of the job is more than the world could expect of the beautiful
+Ann Craddock, who sits in the front of Gale Beacon's box at the
+Metropolitan," answered Pan, with a little flute of laughter in his voice
+that matched the crimson crests which stood more rampant than ever across
+the tips of his ears.
+
+"Why, where--who are you and--" I asked in astonishment as I followed him
+into the last of the sunset glow coming across the front of the barn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"I'm just Adam and I go many places," he answered with more of the
+intoxicating crooning laughter.
+
+"Rufus says that red-headed Peckerwoods go to the devil on Fridays," I
+retorted to the raillery of the Pan laugh.
+
+"It _was_ Friday and she didn't sing Delilah to my notion. Did she to
+yours?" he asked, this time with a smile that was even more interesting
+than the laugh. "Come over and sit with me by the spring-house and let's
+discuss grand opera while I eat my supper and wait until I think it is safe
+to give the ewe some mash.
+
+"I will if you'll invite me to the supper; I can't face another swine and
+muffin meal," I answered as I followed him down a path that led west from
+the barn-door.
+
+"I've got two apples and a double handful of black walnut kernels. The
+drinks from the spring are on you," he answered as he led me down through a
+thicket of slim trees that were sending out a queer fragrance to a huge old
+stone spring-house from which gushed a stream of water. "Just these two
+spring days are bringing out the locust buds almost before time. Smell
+'em!" he said as he looked up into the tops of the slim trees, which were
+showing a pink-green tinge of color in the red sunset rays.
+
+"Oh," I said softly as I clasped my hands to my breast and breathed in
+deep, "I'm glad, glad I didn't have to let them sell it. I love it. I love
+it!"
+
+"Sell it?" asked Adam as he brushed a rug of dry leaves from under the
+bushes upon one of the huge slabs of rock before the door of the
+spring-house for me to sit on, and took two apples from his pocket.
+
+"Yes, and I'll work both my fingers and toes to the bone before I'll give
+it up," I answered as I crouched down beside him on the leaves and began to
+munch at the apple, which he had polished on the sleeve of his soft, gray,
+flannel shirt before he handed it to me.
+
+While we dined on the two red apples, the tangy nuts, and a few hard
+crackers that, I think, were dog-biscuits, I told him all about it, up to
+my defiance and assumption of the management of Elmnest in the library
+after dinner.
+
+"I _can_ keep us from starving until I learn chickens, can't I?" I asked
+after the recital, and I crouched a little closer to him on the rock, for
+black shadows were coming in between the trees and into my consciousness,
+and all the pink moonlight had faded as a rosy dream, leaving the world
+about us silver gray.
+
+"I wonder just how much genuine land passion there is in the hearts of
+women?" said Adam, softly answering my question with another. "The duration
+of race life depends upon it really."
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about, but I understand you," I answered
+him hotly. "Also I know that I love that old sheep more than you do, and
+I'm going to get in line with my egg-basket when the United States begins
+mustering in forces to fight, no matter what it is to be. I wish I could
+say it like I feel it to that Mr. Secretary Evan Baldwin, who forgets that
+women are the natural--the nutritive sex."
+
+"I wish you could," said kind Adam, with one of Pan's railing laughs.
+
+"Don't laugh at me--I'm getting born all over, and it is hard," I said with
+a sob in my throat.
+
+"Forgive me! I'm not really laughing--it's just a form--form of the
+Peckerwood's nature-worship," he answered as he took my hand in his warm
+one for a second. "Let's go finish up with old sheep mother," he added as
+he began to pad swiftly away up the path, drawing me after him.
+
+"Yes, I _am_ growing inside," I assured myself as I for the second night
+fell asleep on the soft bosom of my family tradition of four posts.
+
+One of the most bromidic performances that human beings indulge in
+anywhere from their thirty-fifth to eightieth years is to sigh, look wise,
+and make this remark: "If I could only begin life over again, knowing what
+I do now!"
+
+I'm never going to be impressed by that again, and I'm going to answer
+straight out from the shoulder, "Well, it would be a great strain to you if
+you found yourself doing it."
+
+That was about what my entry into life at Elmnest, Riverfield, Harpeth,
+was, and in many places it rubbed and hurt my pride; in many places at many
+times it sapped my courage; in many ways it pruned and probed into my
+innermost being with a searching knife to see if I really did have any
+intelligence or soul, and at all times it left me with a feeling of just
+having been sprouted off the cosmic. I know what I mean, but it doesn't
+sound as if I did. This is the way most of it happened to me in my first
+six weeks of life in the rustic.
+
+How did I know that when you cleaned up a house that hadn't been cleaned
+up for about fifteen years you must wait for ten days after you came to
+that realization for a sunshiny day, and carry all the beds out in the yard
+before you began, and that no matter how much awful dust and cobwebs you
+swept and mopped out or how much old furniture you polished until it
+reflected your face, it was all perfectly futile unless the bed-sunning
+ceremony had been first observed? Just how were the ability to speak French
+in the most exclusive circles of Parisian society and a cultivated
+knowledge of every picture-gallery in the world going to keep me from
+making a blunder that would put me down in Mrs. Pennie Addcock's mind as a
+barbarian?
+
+"Why, Mrs. Tillett and me have been getting ready all along to come and
+help you beat and sun the beds the first sunshiny day and then turn to with
+our buckets and mops and brooms. Now you've gone and done the wrong thing
+by all this polishing before a single bed had been beat and aired." As she
+spoke Mrs. Addcock surveyed my house, upon which I had spent every waking
+moment of my muscular strength, assisted by Polly Corn-tassel and sometimes
+Bud of the blue eyes, but not at all by Rufus, who resented the cleansing
+process to such an extent that he wrapped up his jaw in a piece of old
+flannel and retired to the hay-loft when Bud and Polly and I insisted on
+invading the horrors of his kitchen.
+
+"Oh, my dear Mrs. Addcock, won't you and Mrs. Tillett please forgive me for
+being so ignorant and help me do it to-day?" I pleaded as I picked up a
+small Tillett, who was peeping soft wooing at me from where he balanced
+himself on uncertain and chubby legs against his mother's skirts.
+
+"Well, in this case there is just nothing else to do, but turn to on the
+beds now, wrong end first, but next year you'll know," she answered me with
+indulgent compromise in her voice. "And I guess we'll find some broom and
+mop work yet to be done. Come on, Mrs. Tillett. I guess Nancy can mind the
+baby all right while we work."
+
+"Oh, he ain't no trouble now except he wants to find out all about the
+world by tasting of it. Don't let him eat a worm or sech, and he'll be all
+right," answered the beaming young mother of the toddler. "And, Miss Nancy,
+I was jest going to tell you that I have got a nice pattern of a plain kind
+of work dress if you would like to use it," she added as she pointedly did
+not look at my peasant's smock that hung in such lovely long lines that I
+found myself pausing much too often before one of the mirrors in the big
+living-room to admire them. Mrs. Tillett's utility costume was of blue
+checked gingham and had no lines at all except top and bottom, with a belt
+in between. Both ladies wore huge gingham aprons, and I must say that they
+looked like the utility branch of the feminine species while I may have
+resembled the ornamental. But they were dear neighbors, and the Tillett
+baby and I had a very busy and happy day with the Golden Bird and his busy
+family while the two missionaries did over every bed in Elmnest, even
+invading the living-room and shaking out the cushions of the old couch in
+the very face of one of the charges of Xerxes' army. I put his babykins in
+a big feed-basket in a nest of hay, and the two lamb twins came and licked
+him every now and then by way of welcome into my barn nursery. The fine
+young sheep mother was now in blooming health, and the valuable progeny
+were growing by the hours, most of which they spent at the maternal fount,
+opposite each other and both small tails going like a new variety of
+speedometer.
+
+"I see mother ewe knows enough to hang around the lady of the barn and
+feed-bins. Those lambkins are two pounds heavier than any born within a
+week of them at Plunkett's," Pan had said not a week past, and both sheep
+mother and I had beamed with gratified pride at his commendation.
+
+[Illustration: I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins
+came and welcomed him]
+
+Then while the renovation of the four-posters went on with a happy buzz, I
+busied myself in and out and about with the numberless details of care of
+the Bird family. My knowledge of music earned by many long hours in the
+practice of harmonics and a delighted and diligent attendance at the opera
+seasons of New York, Berlin, and Paris, to say nothing of Boston and
+London, had not, in my new life, in any way aided me to see that I had made
+a mistake in ordering a three-hundred-egg incubator to start building a
+prize flock with Mr. Golden Bird and the ten Ladies Leghorn, but in this
+case Adam had guided me from off that shoal, and by telegram I had changed
+the order for three fifty-egg improved metal mothers and the implements
+needed in accomplishing their maternal purpose. In one of them were now
+fifty beautiful white pearls that I could not refrain from visiting and
+regarding through the little window in the metallic side of the metallic
+mother at least several times an hour, though I knew that twice a day to
+regulate the heat and fill the lamp was sufficient.
+
+"I don't believe I'll be able to stand seeing them hop out," I remarked to
+Baby Tillett, the lambkins, and the good old red ally, who was patiently
+seated on a box over fifteen of the pearls. Adam had kept the poor old
+darling covering some white china eggs for nearly two weeks before he gave
+her the pearls on the same day we put the forty-five in the interior of her
+metal rival. I didn't at first understand his sinister purpose in thus
+holding her back until the metal rival could get an even start, but I did
+later.
+
+"I hope you have a mighty good hatching, Nancy, but I have no faith in
+half-way measures, and a tin box is a half-way measure for a hen, just as
+cleaning house without bed-sunning is trifling," said Mrs. Addcock, with a
+final prod as she came out to the barn with Mrs. Tillett to reclaim Baby
+Tillett.
+
+"You ain't married, Miss Nancy, and you won't understand how babies need
+mothers, even the chicken kind," said Mrs. Tillett, as she cuddled Baby
+Tillett gurglingly against her shoulder and followed in the wake of Mrs.
+Addcock with the mops and buckets down the walk and around the house.
+
+I stood beside the tin triumph of science, with my baby lambs licking at my
+hands, while Mrs. Ewe nuzzled for corn in one of my huge pockets, and a
+baby collie, which Pan had brought the week before, when her eyes were
+scarcely open, tumbled about my feet, and looked after the retreating
+women--and I did understand.
+
+"Still, I'll do the best I can by your--your progeny, Mr. G. Bird," I said
+as the great big, white old fellow came and pecked in my pocket for corn in
+perfect friendliness with Mrs. Ewe.
+
+I was called upon to keep my promise in less than a week. It might have
+been a tragedy if Bess Rutherford's practical sense had not helped save my
+affections from a panic. This is how it happened.
+
+"Yes, chicken culture is a germ that spreads by contagion. I'm not at all
+surprised at your friends," Adam had answered when I had appealed to him to
+know if I could sell Bess Rutherford just six of the baby chicks, when they
+came out, for her to begin a brood in a new back-yard system, only Bess is
+so progressive that she is having a nice big place in the conservatory that
+opens out of her living-room cleared for them to run about out of their tin
+mother when they want to. She says she believes eternal vigilance is the
+price of success with poultry as the book she bought, which is different
+from mine, says, and Bess decided that she wanted her chickens where she
+could go in to see them comfortably when she came from parties and things
+without having to go around in the back yard, which is the most lovely
+garden in Hayesville anyway, in her slippers and party clothes. "I'd sell
+her the chicks at twenty dollars apiece, and that's cheap if they produce
+as they ought to with their blood and such--such care as she intends to
+bestow on them. The twenty-dollar price will either cure her or start an
+idle woman into a producer," said Adam, in answer to my request, as he cut
+me out a pair of shoes from a piece of hide like that which the shoes upon
+his own feet were made from. It was raining, and I sat at his feet in the
+barn and laboriously sewed what he had cut.
+
+I told Bess what Adam said, and she paid me the hundred and twenty dollars
+right on the spot, and then insisted on opening the incubator at the
+regular time for the ten minutes the book directs, to cool off the eggs
+night and morning, and putting her monogram on six of the eggs. To do this
+she decided to stay all night, and telephoned her maid, Annette, to pack
+her bag and let Matthew bring it out to her when he came to help Polly
+Corn-tassel put their first batch of eggs into their incubator. Matthew had
+bought twenty hens and two nice brotherly roosters, and they had almost
+caught up with me in the number of their brown babies on the whole shells.
+Matthew had been coming out night and morning ever since he had brought
+out his and the Beesleys' poultry and had either had supper with us at
+Elmnest or we had both got riz biscuits and peach preserves and chicken
+fried with Aunt Mary and Uncle Silas and Polly and Bud. I had subjugated
+Rufus into cooking a few canned things, for which I had traded one of his
+pig jaws at the bank-post-office-grocery emporium, and Uncle Silas had
+thrown in a few potatoes, and Adam had brought me a great bag of white
+beans from across Paradise Ridge, so the diet at Elmnest had changed
+slightly. The absorbed twins had never noticed it at all; only they
+displayed more hearty vigor in attacking the problems of literature and
+history that absorbed them. Also almost every day Pan brought me young
+green things that were sprouting in the woods, and I cooked them for him in
+an old iron pot down by the spring-house and had supper with him.
+
+"Those two dears are the most precious old Rips I ever beheld," said Bess
+when we had retired to my room after supper on the fateful night of our
+near tragedy. "You are so fortunate, Ann, to have two delicious fathers in
+name only. Mine pokes into my business at all angles and insists on so much
+attention from me that I don't know how I'll amount to anything in this
+world. He says it takes a very fine and brainy woman to earn about ten
+thousand dollars a year being affectionate and agreeable to her own father,
+and that I get so much because there is no possible competition as I am an
+only child, but all the same it looks like unearned money to me. Just wait
+until those six little chickens begin to earn me a hundred dollars a month
+like my book guarantees they will do in their second year; then I'm going
+to show dad just how much I love him for himself and give him back my
+bank-book."
+
+"Still it is an awful lot of work, Bess," I remonstrated feebly, because I
+knew that I couldn't have made myself believe all I had learned in just two
+months at Elmnest the day I started in business.
+
+"You know, Ann, I told you about that wonderful Evan Baldwin who has been
+in Hayesville two or three times this winter, the man to whom the governor
+gave the portfolio of agriculture, I believe they call it. Well, he was at
+the Old Hickory ball the other night when you wouldn't come, and I told him
+all about you and about buying those little chickens from you, and he was
+so wonderful and sympathetic that Owen Murray sulked dreadfully. He
+encouraged me entirely and told me a lot of things about some of his
+experiment stations in all the different States. You thought you were going
+to stagger me with that twenty-dollar price on those chicks in shell, but
+he said he had paid as much as five hundred dollars apiece for a few eggs
+he got from some prize chickens in England and had brought them over in a
+basket in his own hand. He said he thought from what I told him about the
+Golden Bird that twenty would be about right for one of his sons or
+daughters. Ann, he is a perfectly delicious man, and you must meet him. It
+is awful the way all the girls and women just follow him in droves, though
+I'm sure he doesn't seem to notice us."
+
+"I never want to lay eyes on him, Bess. He has insulted me and I never--"
+but just here a thought struck me in my solar plexus and crinkled me
+entirely up. "Oh, Bess, I forgot to fill the lamp in the incubator
+to-night, and I believe the chicken eggs will be all chilled to death. What
+will I do? It is near midnight and it's--it's--c--cold."
+
+"Let's get 'em quick and maybe we can resuscitate 'em. Don't you remember
+about reviving frozen people in that first-aid class we had just after the
+war broke out and we didn't know whether we were in it or not? Come on,
+quick!" Bess seized the quilt from the bed and descended into the back
+yard, clad only in her lingerie for sleeping, a silk robe-de-chambre and
+satin mules, while I followed, likewise garmented.
+
+"Oh, dear, how cold," wailed Bess as the frosty Spring air poured around us
+in our flight to the barn.
+
+"Put the quilt around you," I chattered.
+
+"I'm going to put all the egg chickens in it," she answered as we scuttled
+into the barn out of the wind.
+
+"The lamp is out, but the eggs still feel warm to the hand," I said as I
+knelt in deep contrition beside the metal hen.
+
+"Fill it and light it, and they'll soon warm up," advised Bess.
+
+"There's no oil on the place. I forgot it," I again wailed.
+
+"Isn't there room under the hen here?" asked Bess, with the brilliant mind
+she inherited from Mr. Rutherford running over the speed limit, and as she
+spoke she felt under the old Red Ally, who only clucked good naturedly.
+
+"It feels like she is covering a hundred now, and there's no room for
+more," said Bess, answering herself with almost a wail in her voice. "What
+will we do? The book says April-hatched chickens are the best, and these
+would have come out in just a few days."
+
+And then from somewhere in my heart, which had harbored the cuddle of the
+cold lamb babies against it, there rose a knowledge of first aid for the
+near-baby chickens.
+
+"Oh, Bess," I exclaimed, "let's wrap the tray of eggs up in the quilt and
+take it up-stairs to bed with us. We are just as warm as the hen, and I'll
+get Rufus to go for Polly at daylight to fix the lamp while we stay in bed
+and huddle them until the incubator warms up, as it does in just an hour
+after it's lighted."
+
+"Ann, you are both maternal and intellectual," said Bess, with the deepest
+admiration in her voice. "Let's hurry or we'll never get warmed up
+ourselves."
+
+And in very much less time than could be imagined Bess Rutherford and I
+were in the middle of the four-poster, sunk deep into the feathers with the
+precious pearls of life carefully imbedded between us.
+
+"Now don't joggle," Bess commanded as we got all settled and tucked in.
+
+"Mrs. Tillett lets little Tillett sleep with her cold nights," I murmured
+drowsily.
+
+"I don't believe it; no woman would undertake the responsibility of human
+life like that," Bess answered as she tucked in a loose end of cover under
+the pillow.
+
+"Most of the world mothers sleep with their babies," Adam said when I told
+him about little Tillett, "and--" I was answering when I trailed off into a
+dream of walking a tight rope over a million white eggs. In the morning
+Bess said she had dreamed that she was a steam roller trying to make a road
+of eggs smooth enough to run her car over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Also Bess and I woke to find ourselves heroines. Matthew came to breakfast
+after he had seen the lamps in his mock hens burning brightly, and brought
+Polly with him to congratulate us on the rescue of our infant industry.
+Polly had told him of our brilliant coup against old Jack Frost, and he was
+all enthusiasm, as was also Uncle Cradd, while father beamed because he was
+hearing me praised and thought of something else at the same time. Later
+Owen Murray came out for Bess in his car, and insisted on buying six more
+of the eggs, because, he said, they had now become a sporting proposition
+and interested him. Bess agreed to board them to maturity in her
+conservatory for him at fifty cents a day per head and let him visit them
+at any time. He gave me a check immediately. He offered to buy six of
+Polly's chicks at the same price, but Matthew refused to let her sell them
+at all, and also Bess refused to have any mixing of breeds in her
+conservatory. Polly didn't know enough to resent losing the hundred and
+twenty dollars, because she had never had more than fifty cents in her
+life, and Matthew didn't realize what it would have meant to her to have
+that much money, because he had more than he needed all his life, so they
+were all happy and laughed through one of Rufus' worst hog effusions in the
+way of a meal for lunchers, but--but I had in a month learned to understand
+what a dollar might mean to a man or woman, and at the thought of that two
+hundred and forty dollars Mr. G. Bird and family had earned for me in their
+second month of my ownership my courage arose and girded up its loins for
+the long road ahead. I knew enough to know that these returns were a kind
+of isolated nugget in the poultry business, and yet why not?
+
+"We'll sell Mr. Evan Baldwin a five-hundred-dollar gold egg yet, Mr. G.
+Bird," I said to myself.
+
+After luncheon they all departed and left me to my afternoon's work.
+Matthew lingered behind the others and helped me feed the old red ally and
+Mrs. Ewe and Peckerwood Pup.
+
+"I was talking to Evan Baldwin at the club after his first lecture the
+other night and, Ann, I believe I'll be recruited for the plow as well as
+for the machine-gun. I'm going to buy some land out there back of the
+Beesleys' and raise sheep on it. He says Harpeth is losing millions a year
+by not raising sheep. I'm going to live at Riverfield a lot of the time and
+motor back and forth to business. Truly, Ann, the land bug has bit me
+and--and it isn't just--just to come up on your blind side. But, dear, now
+don't you think that it would be nice for me to live over here with you as
+a perfectly sympathetic agricultural husband?"
+
+"I needed a husband so much more yesterday to help with the pruning of the
+rose-vines than I do to-day, Matthew," I answered with a laugh. Matthew's
+proposals of marriage are so regular and so alike that I have to avoid
+monotony in the wit of my answers.
+
+"I'm never in time to do a single thing on this place, and I don't see how
+everything gets done for you without my help. Who helps you?"
+
+"Everybody," I answered. I had never had the courage to break Adam to
+Matthew in the long weeks I had been seeing them both every day, and of
+course Pan had never come out of the woods when Matthew or any of the rest
+were there. "I'll tell you what you can do for me," I said, with a sudden
+inspiration about getting rid of him, for the red-headed Peckerwood had
+promised to come and put some kind of hoodoo earth around the peonies and
+irises and pinks in my garden, also to bud some kind of a new rose on one
+of the old blush ones, and I wanted the place quiet so he would venture
+out of his lair. "You can go on to town and look after Polly carefully. She
+is going in with Bess for the first time since their infatuation, and I
+want her eyes to open gradually on the world out over Paradise Ridge."
+
+"Ann, ought they ever to open?" asked Matthew, suddenly, with the color
+coming up to the roots of his hair and burning in his ears like it still
+does in Bud Corn-tassel's when he comes over to see or help me or to bring
+me something from Aunt Mary, his mother. "Bess is one of the best of
+friends I've got in the world, but I just--just couldn't see Corn-tassel
+dancing in some man's arms in the mere hint of an evening gown that Bess
+occupied while fox-trotting with Evan Baldwin at the club the other night."
+
+"Who was the belle of the ball, Matt?" I asked him, with a flame in my
+cheeks, for the pink and lavender chiffon gown Bess had worn was one of
+the Voudaine creations that I had brought from Paris and sold her after the
+crash.
+
+"Oh, Bess always is when you are not there and, Ann, don't for a moment
+think that I--I--" Poor Matthew was stuttering while I rubbed the tip of my
+nose against his sleeve in the way of a caress, as I had a feed-bucket in
+one hand and a water-pan in the other.
+
+"Do go and shop with Polly and Bess as a force for protection. I must have
+a quiet afternoon to commune with my garden," I commanded.
+
+"Sometimes you make me so mad, Ann Craddock, that--that--" Matthew was
+stuttering when Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door to chat with him, and
+I made my escape through the barn and out into the woods. I had thought
+that I saw a glint of Peckerwood red pass through the pasture that way, and
+I was determined that Pan shouldn't give me and the garden the slip as he
+always did when he saw anybody around.
+
+As I ran rapidly through the old pasture, which was overgrown with
+buckbushes and sassafras sprouts, which were turning into great pink and
+green fern clumps in the warm April sunshine, I gave the two or three
+Saint-Saëns Delilah notes which had been robbed of any of their wicked
+Delilah flavor for me by having heard Mr. G. Bird sing them so beautifully
+on the stage of the Metropolitan in that first dream night in Elmnest. But
+I called and then called in vain until at last I came out to the huge old
+rock that juts out from the edge of the rugged little knoll at the far end
+of the pasture. Here I paused and looked down on Elmnest in the afternoon
+sunshine with what seemed to be suddenly newly opened eyes. I had been in
+and out of Elmnest to such an extent for the last six weeks that I hadn't
+had a chance to get off and look at it from an outsider's standpoint, and
+now suddenly I was taking that view of it. The old rose and green brick
+house, covered in by its wide, gray shingle roof, the gables and windows
+of which were beginning to be wreathed in feathery and pink young vines,
+which were given darker notes here and there in their masses by the sturdy
+green of the honey-suckles, hovered down on a small plateau rear-guarded by
+the barn and sheds, flanked by the garden and the gnarled old orchard, and
+from its front door the long avenue of elms led far down to the group of
+Riverfield houses that huddled at the other end. All villages in the State
+of Harpeth have been so built around the old "great houses" of the colonial
+landowners, and between their generations has been developed a communistic
+life that I somehow feel is to bridge from the pioneer life of this country
+to the great new life of the greater commune that is coming to us. Down
+there in Riverfield I knew that there was sin and sorrow and birth and
+death, but there was no starvation, and for every tragedy there was a
+neighbor to reach out a helping hand, and for every joy there were hearty
+and friendly rejoicings.
+
+"Oh, and I'm one of them--I belong," I said to myself as I noted each
+cottage into which I went and came at will, as friend and beloved neighbor.
+Even at that distance I could see a small figure, which I knew to be Luella
+Spain, running up the long avenue, and in its hand I detected something
+that, I was sure, was a covered plate or dish. "And I'm making Elmnest
+fulfil its destiny into the future--into the future that the great Evan
+Baldwin is preaching about in town, instead of practicing out in the
+fields. I wonder if he really knows a single thing about farming."
+
+"He does," came an answer from right at my shoulder in Pan's flutiest
+voice, and I turned to find him standing just behind me on the very edge of
+the old tilting rock.
+
+"How do you know?" I demanded of him as I took the clean white cloth tied
+up at four corners, gypsy-fashion, which he offered me and which, I could
+see, was fairly bursting with green leaves of a kind I had never seen
+before.
+
+"I was with him at the Metropolitan the night I saw Ann Craddock in Gale
+Beacon's box, you know,--the night that Mr. G. Bird sang 'Delilah,' and
+also I've slept on the bare ground with him in his woods in Michigan and on
+his red clay in Georgia."
+
+"Well, I hate him all the same for the insult of his offer to buy Elmnest,
+though I doubt if he has any family pride or any family either, so, of
+course, he wouldn't understand that it _is_ an insult to offer to buy one's
+colonial home with holes in the door to shoot Indians through," I answered
+with the temper that always came at the mention of the name of a man I had
+chosen to consider a foe without any consent on his part at all.
+
+"You'd think he was born and raised in a hollow log if you should ever
+interview him, and he hasn't any family, but from some of the motions he is
+making, I think he intends to have," answered Pan, with one of his most
+fluty jeers, and he shook his head until the crests ruffled still lower
+over the tips of his ears.
+
+"Are you--you one of his agents--that is, _spies_, and was it you that
+insulted me by wanting to buy Elmnest just because it was poor and old?" I
+demanded, with the color in my cheeks.
+
+"I am not his spy or his agent, and do you want to come down to the
+spring-house and cook these wild-mustard shoots for our dinner, or shall I
+go at our old garden with the prospect of an empty stomach at sunset?"
+
+"Why won't you come in to dinner with me?" I asked, with a mollified laugh,
+though I knew I was bringing down upon myself about my hundredth refusal of
+proffered hospitality.
+
+"Two reasons--first, because I won't eat with my neighbors at the 'great
+house' when I can't eat with them in the cottage, and I just can't eat the
+grease that a lot of the poorer villagers deluge their food with. I'm Pan,
+and I live in the woods on roots and herbs. Second--because about six weeks
+ago I found a farm woman who would come out at my wooing to cook and eat
+the herbs and roots with me and I could have her to myself all alone. Now,
+will you come on down to the spring?" And without waiting for my reply,
+Adam started down the hill, crosswise from the path by which I had
+ascended, padding ahead in his weird leather sandals and breaking a path
+for me through the undergrowth as I followed close at his shoulder, an
+order of rough travel to which I had become accustomed in the weeks that
+had passed and that now seemed to me--well, I might say racial.
+
+In the riot of an April growing day, in which we could hear life fairly
+teem and buzz at our feet, on right, and left, and overhead, Adam and I
+worked shoulder to shoulder in the old garden of Elmnest. Every now and
+then I ran down to the spring to put a green fagot under the pot of herbs,
+which needed to simmer for hours to be as delicious as was possible for
+them. From the library came a rattle and bang of literary musketry from the
+blessed parental twins, who were for the time being with Julius Cæsar in
+"all Gaul," and oblivious to anything in the twentieth century, even a
+spring-intoxicated niece and daughter down in her grandmother's garden with
+a Pan from the woods; occasionally Rufus rattled a pot or a pan; but save
+for these few echoes of civilization, Adam and I delved and spaded and
+clipped and pruned and planted in the old garden just as if it had been the
+plot of ground without the walls of Eden in which our first parents were
+forced to get busy.
+
+"Great work, Farmwoman," said Adam as we sat down on the side steps to eat,
+bite-about, the huge red apple he had taken from the bundle of emigrant
+appearance which he always carried over his shoulder on the end of a long
+hickory stick and which I had by investigation at different times found to
+contain everything from clean linen to Sanskrit poetry for father. To-day I
+found the manuscript score of a new opera by no less a person than Hurter
+himself, which he insisted on having me hum through with him while we ate
+the apple.
+
+"I told Hurter I thought that fourth movement wouldn't do, and now I know
+it after hearing you try it through an apple," said Pan as he rose from
+beside me, tied the manuscript up in the bandana bundle, and picked up his
+long pruning-knife. "Now, Woman, we'll put a curb on the rambling of every
+last rambler in this garden and then we can lay out the rows for Bud to
+plant with the snap beans to-morrow." Adam, from the first day he had met
+me, had addressed me simply with my generic class name, and I had found it
+a good one to which to make answer. Also Adam had shown me the profit and
+beauty of planting all needful vegetables mixed up with the flowers in the
+rich and loamy old garden, and had adjusted a cropping arrangement between
+the Corn-tassel Bud and me that was to be profitable to us both, Bud only
+doing in odd hours the work I couldn't do, and getting a share of the
+profits.
+
+"Don't work me to death to-day," I pleaded, and told him about the rescue
+of the babies Bird with so much dramatic force that his laughter rang out
+with such volume that old Rufus came to the kitchen window to look out and
+shake his head, and I knew he was muttering about "Peckerwoods," "devils,"
+and the sixth day of the week. "Will the chicks live all right, do you
+think?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"They're safe if they never got cold to the touch and you didn't joggle 'em
+too much. Do either you or Miss Rutherford happen to er--er--kick in your
+sleep?"
+
+"We do not!" I answered with dignity, as I snipped away a dead branch of
+ivy from across the path.
+
+"I just thought Miss Rutherford might from--"
+
+"You don't know Bess; she's so executive that--"
+
+"That she wouldn't kick eggs for anything," finished Pan, mockingly. "She
+does pretty well in the Russian ballet, doesn't she?"
+
+"Oh, I wish you could just see her in the 'Cloud Wisp'!" I exclaimed, with
+the greatest pride, for Bess Rutherford has nothing to envy Pavlova about.
+
+"I have--er--have a great desire to so behold her at some future time,"
+answered Pan, with one of his eery laughs, and I could almost see hoofs
+through the raw hide of his shoes. I would have ruffled the red crests off
+of the tips of his ears to see if they really were pointed if he had not
+stood just out of reach of my hand, where it would have been impossible to
+catch him if I tried.
+
+"You won't eat with me in civilization, you won't meet any of my friends,
+and I don't believe you ever want to please me," I said as I turned away
+from his provocation and began again with the scissors.
+
+"I don't like world girls," he said with the fluty coo in his voice that
+always calms the Ladies Leghorn when they are ruffled. "I only love farm
+women. The moon is beginning to get a rise out of the setting sun, and
+let's go away from these haunts of men to our own woods home. Come along!"
+As he spoke Pan pocketed his long knife, picked up his stick and bundle,
+and began to pad away through the trees down towards the spring, with me at
+his shoulder, and for the first time he held my hand in his as I followed
+in my usual squaw style.
+
+In all the long dreary weeks that followed I was glad that I had had that
+dinner at sunset and moonrise with him down in the cove at the spring that
+was away from all the world. All during the days that never seemed to end,
+as I went upon my round of duties, I put the ache of the memories of it
+from me, but in the night I took the agony into my heart and cherished it.
+
+"And it's the Romney hand ye have with the herb-pot, Woman dear," said Adam
+as he squatted down beside our simmering pot and stirred it with the clean
+hickory stick I had barked for that purpose when, very shortly after high
+noon, I had put the greens, with the two wild onion sprigs and the handful
+of inevitable black-walnut kernels, into the iron pot set on the two rocks
+with their smoldering green fire between. "You know you'd rather be eating
+this dinner of sprouts and black bread with your poor Adam than--than
+dancing that 'Cloud Drift' in town with Matthew Berry--or Baldwin the
+enemy."
+
+"Yes," I answered, as I knelt beside him and thrust in another slim stick
+and tasted the juice of the pot off the end. "But it would be hard to make
+Matthew believe it. I forgot to tell you that Matt is really going in for
+farming, thanks to the evil influence of your friend Evan Baldwin, who
+wouldn't know a farm if he met one on the road, a real farm, I mean. Poor
+Matt little knows the life of toil he is plotting for himself."
+
+"Is he coming to live at Elmnest?" asked Adam, in a voice of entire
+unconcern, as he took the black loaf from his gypsy pack and began to cut
+it up into hunks and lay it on the clean rock beside the pot.
+
+"He is not," I answered with an indignation that I could see no reason
+for.
+
+"Sooner or later, Woman, you'll have to take a mate," was the primitive
+statement that confronted me as I lifted the pot with the skirt of my
+blouse and poured the greens into two brown crockery bowls that Adam kept
+secreted with the pot on a ledge of the old spring-house.
+
+"Well, a husky young farmer is the only kind of a man who need apply. I
+mean a born rustic. I couldn't risk an amateur with the farm after all
+you've taught me," I answered as we seated ourselves on the warm earth side
+by side and began to dip the hunks of black bread into our bowls and lift
+the delicious wilted leaves to our mouths with it, a mode of consumption it
+had taken Pan several attempts to teach me. Pan never talks when he eats,
+and he seems to browse food in a way that each time tempts me more and more
+to reach out my hand and lift one of the red crests to see about the points
+of his ears.
+
+"Do you want to hear my invocation to my ultimate woman?" he asked as he
+set his bowl down after polishing it out with his last chunk of bread some
+minutes after I had so finished up mine.
+
+"Is it more imperative than the one you give me under my window before I
+have had less than a good half-night's sleep every morning?" I asked as I
+crushed a blade of meadow fern in my hands and inhaled its queer tang.
+
+    "I await my beloved in
+    Grain fields.
+    Come, woman!
+    In thy eyes is truth.
+    Thy body must give food with
+    Sweat of labor, and thy lips
+    Hold drink for love thirst.
+    I am thy child.
+    I am thy mate.
+    Come!"
+
+Pan took my hand in his as he chanted, and held my fingers to his lips, and
+ended his chant with several weird, eery, crooning notes blown across his
+lips and through my fingers out into the moonlit shadows.
+
+"I feel about you just as I do about one of Mrs. Ewe's lambkins," I
+whispered, with a queer answering laugh in my voice, which held and
+repeated the croon in his.
+
+    "I am thy child.
+    I am thy mate.
+    Oh, come!"
+
+again chanted Pan, and it surely wasn't imagination that made me think that
+the red crests ruffled in the wind. The light in his eyes was unlike
+anything I had ever seen; it smouldered and flamed like the embers under
+the pot beside the rock. It drew me until the sleeve of my smock brushed
+his sleeve of gray flannel. His arms hovered, but didn't quite enclose me.
+
+"And the way I am going to feel about all the little chickens out of the
+incubator," I added slowly as if the admission was being drawn out of me.
+Still the arms hovered, the crests ruffled, and the eyes searched down
+into the depths of me, which had so lately been plowed and harrowed and
+sown with a new and productive flower.
+
+"And the old twin fathers," I added almost begrudgingly, as I cast him my
+last treasure.
+
+Then with a laugh that I know was a line-reproduction descended from the
+one that Adam gave when he first recognized Eve, Pan folded me into his
+arms, laid his red head on my breast, and held up his lips to mine with a
+"love-thirst" that it took me more than a long minute to slack to the point
+of words.
+
+"I knew there was one earth woman due to develop at the first decade of
+this century, and I've found her," Pan fluted softly as he in turn took me
+on his breast and pressed his russet cheek against the tan of mine. "I'm
+going to take her off into the woods and then in a generation salvation for
+the nation will come forth from the forest."
+
+"My word is given to the Golden Bird to see his progeny safe into the
+world, and I must do that before--" but my words ended in a laugh as I
+slipped out of Pan's arms and sprang to my feet and away from him.
+
+"We'll keep that faith with Mr. Bird to-night, and then I can take you with
+me before daylight," said Pan as he collected his Romney bundle with his
+left hand and me with his right and began to pad up the path from the
+spring-house towards the barn under a shower of the white locust-blossoms,
+which were giving forth their last breath of perfume in a gorgeous volume.
+
+"To-night?" I asked from the hollow between his breast and his arm where I
+was fitted and held steadily so that my steps seemed to be his steps and
+the breath of my lungs to come from his.
+
+"Yes; most of the eggs were pipped when I went in the barn to put away the
+tools," answered Adam, with very much less excitement than the occasion
+called for.
+
+"Oh, why--why didn't you tell me?" I demanded as I came out of the first
+half of a kiss and before I retired into the last half.
+
+"Too hungry--had to be fed before they got to eating at your heart,"
+answered Pan in a way that made me know that he meant me and not the
+dandelion greens and brown bread.
+
+"You are joking me; they are not due until day after to-morrow," I said as
+I took my lips away and began to hurry us both towards the barn.
+
+"All April hatches are from two to three days early," was Adam's prosaic
+and instructive answer that cut the last kiss short as we entered the
+barn-door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Quickly I released myself from his arm and flew to kneel in front of the
+metal mother, with the electric torch aimed directly into the little window
+that revealed all her inmost processes. The Peckerwood Pan hovered just at
+my shoulder, and together we beheld what was to me the most wonderful
+phenomenon of nature that had ever come my way. No sunset from Pike's Peak
+or high note from the throat of Caruso could equal it in my estimation.
+Behold, the first baby Bird stepped forth into the world right before my
+astonished and enraptured eyes! It was in this manner.
+
+"Look, right here next to the glass," said Adam, as he put his finger
+against the lower left-hand corner of the peep window, and there I directed
+my torch. One of the great white pearls had a series of little holes around
+one end of it, and while I gazed a sharp little beak was thrust suddenly
+from within it. The shell fell apart, and out stepped the first small
+Leghorn Bird with an assurance that had an undoubted resemblance to that of
+his masculine parent. For a moment he blinked and balanced; then he
+stretched his small wings and shook himself, an operation that seemed to
+fluff about fifty per cent. of the moist aspect from his plump little body,
+and then he deliberately turned and looked into my wide-opened eyes. I
+promptly gasped and sat down on the barn floor, with my head weakly cuddled
+against Adam's knee.
+
+"Two more here on the right-hand side, Woman," said Adam, as he knelt
+beside me, took the torch, supported me in my reaction of astonishment, and
+showed me where a perfect little batch of babies was being born. "Whew,
+Farmer Craddock, but those are fine chickens! Heaven help us, but they are
+all exploding at one time! Only eggs of one hundred per cent. vigor and
+fertility hatch that way. Look at the moisture gathering on the glass. If
+you put your hand in there you would find it about a hundred and ten."
+
+"Oh, look! G. Bird Junior, the first, is almost dry. Please, please let me
+take him in my hand!" I exclaimed as that five-minute-old baby pressed
+close up against the glass and blinked at the light and us bewitchingly.
+
+"You mustn't open the door for at least twelve hours now. Come away before
+the temptation overcomes you," commanded Pan.
+
+"Wait twelve hours to take that fluff-ball in my hands? Adam, you are
+cruel," I said, as he pocketed the torch and left the drama of birth dark
+and without footlights. As he padded away towards the moonlit barn-door, I
+followed him in reluctant protest.
+
+"Do you see that tall pine outlined against the sky over there on Paradise
+Ridge, Woman?" asked Adam, with the Pan lights and laugh coming back into
+his farmer eyes and voice. "I have got to be there an hour before dawn,
+and it is fifteen good miles or more. I want to roll against a log
+somewhere and sleep a bit, and it is now after ten o'clock. Go get your
+bundle, and I'll hang it on my stick, and we will disappear into the forest
+forever. I know a hermit who'll put us in marriage bonds. Come!" As he held
+out his arms Adam began to chant the weird tune to that mate song of his
+own invention.
+
+"You know I can't do that," I said as I went into his embrace and drank the
+chant down into my heart. "There are so many live things that I must stay
+to watch over. I--I'm their--mother as well as--as yours. They must be
+fed."
+
+"God, there really is such a thing as a woman," said Adam as he hid his
+smouldering eyes against my lips. "You'll be waiting when I come back, and
+you'll go with me the minute I call, if it's day or night? You'll be ready
+with your bundle?"
+
+"You don't mean at daylight to-morrow, do you, Pan, dear?" I asked, with
+one of the last laughs that my heart was to know, for sometimes, it seemed
+forever, rippling out past his crimson crests.
+
+"No; listen to me, Woman," said Adam, as he held me tenderly on his right
+arm and took both my hands in his and held them pressed hard against my
+breast. "I am going away to-night, and I don't know when I can get back. I
+only knew to-day I'd have to go; that's why I--I took you and put my brand
+on your heart to-night. I can leave you aloose in the forest and know that
+I'll find you mine when I can come back. But, oh, come with me!"
+
+"I wouldn't be your earth woman, Adam, if I left all these helpless things.
+I'll wait for you, and no matter when you come I'll be ready. Only, only
+you'll never take me quite away from them all, will you?"
+
+"No; I'll build a nest over there in the big woods, and you can go back and
+forth between my--my brood and Mr. G. Bird's," promised Adam with Pan's
+fluty laugh.
+
+"Branded, and I don't even know the initials on the brand," I said to
+myself as I stood on the front steps under a honeysuckle vine that was
+twining with a musky rose in a death struggle as to the strength of their
+perfumes, and watched Adam go padding swiftly and silently away from me
+down the long avenue of elms. A mocking-bird in a tree over by the fence
+was pouring out showers of notes of liquid love, and ringdoves cooed and
+softly nestled up under the eaves above my head. "I'm a woman and I've
+found my mate. I am going to be part of it all," I said to myself as I sank
+to the step and began to brood with the night around me.
+
+I think that God gives it sometimes to a woman to have a night in which she
+sits alone brooding her love until somehow it waxes so strong and brave
+that it can face death by starvation and cold and betrayal and still live
+triumphant. It is so that He recreates His children.
+
+"Now, of course, Ann, everybody admires your pluck about this retiring from
+the world and becoming a model rustic, but it does seem to me that you
+might admit that some of your old friends have at least a part of the
+attraction for you that is vested in, well, say old Mrs. Red Ally, for
+instance. Will you or will you not come in to dine and to wine and to dance
+at the country club with Matthew Saturday evening?" Bess delivered herself
+of the text of her mission to me before she descended from her cherry
+roadster in front of the barn.
+
+"Oh, Bess, just come and see old Mrs. Red and never, never ask me to feel
+about a mere friend of my childhood like I do about her," I answered with
+welcome and excitement both in my voice. "Do come quick and look!"
+
+"Coming," answered Bess, with delightful enthusiasm and no wounded pride,
+as she left the car in one motion and swept into the barn with me in about
+two more.
+
+"Now, just look at that," I said as I opened the top of the long box that
+is called a brooder and is supposed to supplement the functions of the
+metal incubator mother in the destiny of chicken young. It has feed and
+water-pans in it, straw upon the floor as a carpet, and behind flannel
+portières is supposed to burn a lamp with mother ardor sufficient to keep
+the small fledglings warm, though orphaned. Did the week-old babies Leghorn
+have to be content with such mechanical mothering? Not at all! Right in the
+middle of the brooder sat the old Red Ally, and her huge red wings were
+stretched out to cover about twenty-five of the metal-born babies and part
+of her own fifteen, and spread in a close, but fluffy, circle around her
+were the rest of her adopted family all cosily asleep and happy at heart.
+"I left the top of the brooder open while I went for water the second day
+after hers and the incubator's had hatched, and when I came back she was
+just as you see her now, in possession of the entire orphan-asylum."
+
+"Oh, look, she's putting some out from under her and taking others in. Oh,
+Ann!" exclaimed Bess as she dropped on her knees beside the long box.
+
+"Yes; she changes them like that. I've seen her do it," I answered, with my
+cheeks as pink with excitement as were those of my sympathetic friend,
+Elizabeth Rutherford. "And you ought to see her take them all out for a
+walk across the grass. They all peep and follow, and she clucks and
+scratches impartially."
+
+"Ann," said Bess, with a great solemnity in the dark eyes that she raised
+to mine, "I suppose I ought to marry Owen _this_ June. I want to have
+another winter of good times, but I--I'm ashamed to look this hen in the
+face."
+
+"Owen is perfectly lovely," I answered her, which was a very safely
+noncommittal answer in the circumstances.
+
+"He carries one of the chickens he bought from you in his pocket all the
+time, with all necessary food, and it is much larger than any of mine or
+his in my conservatory. Owen is the one who goes in to tend to them when
+he brings me home from parties and things and--and--"
+
+"Matthew took off all of his and Polly's little Reds yesterday, and I've
+never seen him so--so--" I paused for a word to express the tenderness that
+was in dear old Matt's face as he put the little tan fluff-balls one at a
+time into Polly Corn-tassel's outstretched skirt.
+
+"Matthew is a wonder, Ann, and you've got to come to this dance he is
+giving Corn-tassel Saturday--all for love of you because you asked him to
+look after her. He is the sweetest thing to her--just like old Mrs. Red
+here, spreads his wings and fusses if any man who isn't a lineal descendant
+of Sir Galahad comes near her. He's going to be awfully hurt if you don't
+come."
+
+"Then I'll tear myself away from my family and come, though I truly can't
+see that I wished Polly Corn-tassel upon all of you. You are just as crazy
+about the apple-blossom darling as I am, you specially, Bess Rutherford,"
+I answered, with pleased indignation.
+
+"Ann, I do wish you could have seen her in that frilled white thing with
+the two huge blue bows at the ends of the long plaits at my dinner-dance
+the other night, standing and looking at everybody with all the fascination
+and coquetry of--of--well, that little Golden Bird peeping at us from the
+left-hand corner of Mrs. Red Ally's right wing. Where _did_ she get that
+frock?"
+
+"Do you suppose that a woman who runs a farm dairy of fifty cows, while her
+husband banks and post-offices and groceries would be at all routed by a
+few yards of lace and muslin and a current copy of 'The Woman's Review'?
+Aunt Mary made that dress between sun-up and -down and worked out fifty
+pounds of butter as well," I answered, with a glow of class pride in my
+rustic breast.
+
+"All of that is what is seething in my blood until I can't stand it," said
+Bess as we walked towards the barn-door. "The reason I just feel like
+devouring Polly Corn-tassel is that somehow she seems to taste like bread
+and butter to me; I'm tired of life served with mayonnaise dressing with
+tabasco and caviar in it.
+
+"Yes, a Romney herb-pot is better," I said, as a strange chant began to
+play itself on my heartstrings with me alone for a breathless audience.
+
+"And if you come in on Saturday you can--" Bess was saying in a positive
+tone that admitted of no retreat, when Matthew's huge blue car came around
+the drive from the front of Elmnest and stopped by Bess's roadster. On the
+front seat sat Matthew, and Corn-tassel was beside him, but the rest of the
+car was piled high with huge sacks of grain, which looked extremely
+sensible and out of place in the handsomest car in the Harpeth Valley.
+
+"Oh, Miss Ann, Mr. Matthew and I found the greatest bargain in winter
+wheat, and the man opened every sack and let me run my arm to the elbow in
+it. It is all hard and not short in a single grain. We are going to trade
+you half." And Polly's blue eyes, which still looked like the
+uncommercialized violet despite a six weeks' acquaintance with society in
+Hayesville, danced with true farmer delight.
+
+"It's warranted to make 'em lay in night shifts, Ann," said Matthew as he
+beamed down upon me with a delight equal to Polly's, and somehow equally as
+young. "Where'll I put it? In the feed-room in the bins?"
+
+"Yes, and they are almost empty. I was wondering what I would do next for
+food, because I owe Rufus and the hogs so much," I answered gratefully.
+
+"What did you pay?" asked Bess, in a business-like tone of voice.
+
+"Only a dollar and a quarter a bushel, all seed grade," answered Matthew,
+with the greatest nonchalance, as if he had known the grades of wheat from
+his earliest infancy.
+
+"Why, Owen bought two bags of it for our joint family and paid such a
+fortune for it that I forgot the figures immediately; but I took up the
+rug and put it all in my dressing-room to watch over, lest thieves break
+into the garage and steal. Also I made him send me plebeian carnations
+instead of violets for Belle Proctor's dinner Tuesday," said Bess, with
+covetousness in her eyes as she watched Matthew begin to unload his wheat.
+I wonder what Matthew's man, Hickson, at one twenty-five a month, thought
+of his master's coat when he began to brush the chaff out of its London
+nap.
+
+"Oh, Owen Murray is just a town-bred duffer," said Matthew, as he
+shouldered his last sack of grain.
+
+"Well, you are vastly mistaken if you think that--" Bess was beginning to
+say in a manner that I knew from long experience would bring on a war of
+words between her and Matthew when a large and cheerful interruption in the
+shape and person of Aunt Mary Corn-tassel came around the corner of the
+house.
+
+"Well, well, what sort of city farming is going on to-day amongst all
+these stylish folks?" she asked as she skirted the two cars at what she
+considered a safe and respectful distance, and handed me a bunch of sweet
+clover-pinks with a spring perfume that made me think of the breath of Pan
+O'Woods as I buried my lips in them. "You, Polly, go right home and take
+off that linen dress, get into a gingham apron, and begin to help Bud milk.
+I believe in gavots at parties only if they strengthen muscles for milking
+time."
+
+"May I wait and ride down with Mr. Matthew and show him where to put our
+wheat, Mother?" asked Polly as she snuggled up to her mother, who was
+pinning a stray pink into Matthew's button-hole per his request.
+
+"Yes, if he'll put his legs under old Mrs. Butter to help you get done
+before I am ready to strain up," answered Aunt Mary, with a merry twinkle
+in her eye as she regarded Matthew in his purple and fine linen. "Put an
+apron on him," she added.
+
+"Lead me to the apron," said Matthew, with real and not mock heroics.
+
+"But before you go I want to tell all of you about an invitation that has
+come over the telephone in the bank to all of Riverfield, and make a
+consultation about it. Now who do you suppose gave it?"
+
+"Who?" we all asked in chorus.
+
+"Nobody less than the governor of the State called up Silas, me answering
+for him on account of his deafness, and asked everybody to come in to town
+next Saturday night to hear this new commissioner of agriculture that he is
+going to appoint make the opening address of his office, I reckon you could
+call it. You know Silas is the leading Democrat of this district, and the
+governor has opened riz biscuits with me many a time. I told him 'Thank
+you, sir,' we would all come and hear the young man talk about what he
+didn't know, and he laughed and rang off. Yes, we are all going in a kind
+of caravan of vehicles, and I want you to go, Nancy, in the family coach
+and take Mrs. Tillett with you on account of her having to take all the
+seven little Tilletts, because there won't be a minder woman left to look
+after 'em. Bud will drive so as not to disturb Cradd or William in their
+Heathen pursuits or discommode Rufus' disposition. Now, won't it be nice
+for the whole town to go junketing in like that?" As she spoke Aunt Mary
+beamed upon us all with pure delight.
+
+"But Saturday evening is the night that Mr. Matthew is going to have that
+dance for me, Mother," said Polly, with the violets becoming slightly
+sprinkled underneath the long black lashes.
+
+"Well, dancing can wait a spell," answered Aunt Mary, comfortably. "The
+governor said that all the folks at Cloverbend and Providence and Hillsboro
+are going, and Riverfield has got to shake out a forefoot in the trip and
+not a hind one."
+
+"Oh, we'll have the dance next week, Corn-tassel," promised Matthew,
+promptly enough to prevent the drenching of the violets. "It will be great
+to hear Baldwin accept his portfolio, as it were."
+
+"And after his term begins I suppose he'll have offices at the capitol and
+will be in town most of the time. Then we can have him at all the dances.
+Polly, he dances like nothing earthly. Still Matthew won't let him come
+near you; he's deadly to women. We are all positively drugged by him,"
+exclaimed Bess, delighted at the idea of Hayesville society acquiring the
+new commissioner of agriculture for a permanent light.
+
+"Then I can count on you to help Mrs. Tillett and the children in and out,
+Nancy?" continued Aunt Mary, with the light of such generalship in her eye
+that I was afraid even to mention my one-sided feud with the hero of the
+hour. "You can take Baby Tillett and sit a little way apart from her so she
+won't have to feed him all the time to keep him quiet."
+
+"I can take eight people in my car, Mother Corn-tassel," said Matthew,
+with the most beautiful eagerness.
+
+"I can get in five," added Bess, with an equal eagerness. "Can I have the
+Addcocks?" Bess and the pessimistic Mrs. Addcock had got together over some
+medicine to prevent pip in the conservatory young Leghorns.
+
+"Yes, and Matthew can take all the eight Spains if I can sit down Mrs.
+Spain to a bolt of gingham in time to get them all nicely covered for such
+a company," decreed the general, as she ran over in her mind's eye the rest
+of the population of Riverfield. "I'll make all the men hitch their best
+teams to the different rigs, and by starting early and taking both dinner
+and supper on the way we can get there in plenty of time. Twenty miles is
+not more than a half day's trip."
+
+"I can sit by you and hold two Spains in my lap," I heard Polly plan with
+Matthew.
+
+"Sure you can," he answered her. "I think the loveliest thing about
+Matthew Berry is the way he speaks to women and children." As he answered,
+he piled Aunt Mary and Polly in beside the rest of the wheat-bags and
+motored them away down the avenue.
+
+"Ann, please come to town with me," pleaded Bess as she got into her car
+and prepared to follow in the wake of the wheat-bags. "I miss you so, and
+Belle weeps at the mention of you. She and I are having dinner at the Old
+Hickory Club with Houston Jeffries and Owen to-night. Matt will come, and
+let's have one good old time. I came all this way to get you."
+
+"I honestly, honestly can't, Bess," I said as I took her hand stretched
+down from her seat behind the wheel to me, and put my cheek against it.
+"I've got this whole farm to feed between now and night. Both incubators
+must have their supper of oil or _you_ know what'll happen. Mrs. Ewe and
+family must be fed, or rather she must be fed so as to pass it along at
+about breakfast time, I should say, not being wise in biology or natural
+history; the entire Bird family are invited to supper with me, and I even
+have to carry a repast of corn over the meadows to my pet abhorrences,
+Rufus' swine, because he has retired to the hay-loft with a flannel rag
+around his head, which means I have offended him or that father has given
+him an extra absent-minded drink from the decanter that Matthew brought
+him. Peckerwood Pup is at this moment, you see, chewing the strings out of
+my shoes as an appetizer for her supper. How could I eat sweetbreads and
+truffle, which I know Owen has already ordered, when I knew that more than
+a hundred small children were at home crying for bread?"
+
+"Ann, what is it that makes you so perfectly radiantly beautiful in that
+faded linen smock and old corduroy skirt? Of course, you always were
+beautiful, but now you look like--like--well, I don't know whether it is a
+song I have heard or a picture I have seen." Bess leaned down and laid her
+cheek against mine for a second.
+
+"I'm going to tell you some day before long," I whispered as I kissed the
+corner of her lips. "Now do take the twin fathers for a little spin up the
+road and make them walk back from the gate. They have been suffering with
+the Trojan warriors all day, and I know they must have exercise. Uncle
+Cradd walks down for the mail each day, but father remains stationary. Your
+method with them is perfect. Go take them while I supper and bed down the
+farm."
+
+"I know now the picture is by Tintoretto, and it's some place in Rome,"
+Bess called back over her shoulder as she drove her car slowly around to
+the front door to begin her conquest and deportation of my precious
+ancients.
+
+"Not painted by Tintoretto, but by the pagan Pan," I said to myself as I
+turned into the barn door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When I came out with a bucket of the new wheat in my hand, I heard Bess and
+her car departing, with Uncle Cradd's sonorous speech mingling with the
+puff of the engine.
+
+"We are all alone, Mr. G. Bird, and we love it, because then we can talk
+comfortably about our Mr. Adam," I said to the Golden Bird as he followed
+me around the side of the barn where a door had been cut by Pan himself to
+make an entry into my improvised chicken-house.
+
+Suddenly I was answered by a very interesting chuckling and clucking, and I
+turned to see what had disengaged the attention of Mr. G. Bird from me and
+my feed-bucket. The sight that met my eyes lifted the shadow that had lain
+between the Golden Bird and me since the morning I had taken him in to see
+his newly arrived progeny and had not been able to make him notice their
+existence. Stretching out behind me was a trail of wheat that had dripped
+from a hole in the side of the bucket, and along the sides of it the
+paternal Bird was marshaling his reliable foster-mother, Mrs. Red Ally's
+and all his own fluffy white progeny. With exceeding generosity he was not
+eating a grain himself, but scratching and chortling encouragingly.
+
+"I knew you were not like other chicken men, Mr. G. Bird, 'male indifferent
+to hatches,' as the book said," I exclaimed as he caught up with me and
+began to peck the grains I offered from my hand. "You are just like Owen
+and Matthew and Mr. Tillett and--and--" but I didn't continue the
+conversation because the chant began rending my heartstrings again. "Oh,
+Mr. G. Bird, it is an awful thing for a woman to have an apple orchard and
+lilac bushes in bloom when she is alone," I sighed instead, as I went on
+to my round of feeding, very hungry myself for--a pot of herbs. Later I,
+too, was fed.
+
+Long after the twin fathers had had supper and were settled safely by their
+candles, which were beacons that led them back into past ages, I sat by
+myself on the front doorstep in the perfumed darkness that was only faintly
+lit by stars that seemed so near the earth that they were like flowers of
+light blossoming on the twigs of the roof elms. In a lovely dream I had
+just gone into the arms of Pan when I heard out beyond the orchard a soft
+moo of a cow, and with it came a weak little calf echo.
+
+"Somebody's cow has strayed--I wish she belonged to me and could help me
+with this nutrition job," I said to myself as I rose and ran down under the
+branches of the gnarled old apple-trees, which sifted down perfumed blow
+upon my head as I ran. Then I stopped and listened again. Over the old
+stone wall that separated the orchard from the pasture I heard footsteps
+and soft panting, also a weak little cow-baby protest of fatigue.
+
+"I'll get over the wall and see if there is any trouble with them," I said
+and I suited my actions to my words. I suppose in the dark I forgot that
+cows have horns and that I had never even been introduced to one before,
+for with the greatest confidence and sympathy I walked up near the large
+black mass that was the cow mother, with a very small and wavering body
+pressed close at her side.
+
+"Did you call me, Mother Cow?" I asked softly.
+
+The question was taken from my lips as Pan came out of the darkness behind
+her and took me into his arms.
+
+"Yes, she called you. I didn't think I'd see you. I was just going to leave
+her for you and go my way; but trust women for secret communication," he
+said as my arm slipped around his bare throat.
+
+"Not see me?" I questioned.
+
+"I never wanted to see you again until I came for you, Woman. I didn't
+think I could stand it--to put you out of my arms again. I can't take you
+with me to-night. I came miles out of my way to bring her to you, and I've
+hurried them both cruelly. The calf is only two days old, but you do need
+her badly to feed the chickens. Milk-fed chickens show a gain of thirty per
+cent. over others. You can churn and get all the butter you need and feed
+them the buttermilk."
+
+"Do you suppose I can learn to milk and churn her?" I asked as I shrank a
+bit closer in his arms from this new responsibility.
+
+"Milk her and churn the milk," laughed Pan as he bent my head forward on
+his arm, set his teeth in the back of my neck, and shook me like Peckerwood
+Pup shakes the gray kitten when I'm not looking.
+
+"Will you show me in the morning?"
+
+"Woman, I have to run ten miles through the forest before daybreak, and I
+don't know when I can come back to you. I know I ought to tell you things,
+but I--I just can't. I demand of life that I be allowed to come for you and
+take you into the woods with only your Romney bundle. Will you be here
+ready for me when I come, and keep the bundle tied up?"
+
+"Yes," I answered as I drew his head down and pressed it to my breast,
+hoping that he might hear the chant on my heartstrings. I think he did
+hear.
+
+    "I am thy child.
+    I am thy mate.
+      Come!"
+
+he made response, as he slipped from my arms and away into the darkness,
+leaving me alone with only the mother now for company. She licked my arm
+with a warm, rough tongue, and I came back into my own body and led her to
+the barn and supper.
+
+There are two kinds of love, the cultivated kind that bores into a woman's
+heart through silk and laces in a hot-house atmosphere and brings about
+all kinds of enervating reactions until operated upon by marriage; the
+other kind a field woman breathes into her lungs and it gets into her
+circulation and starts up the most awful and productive activity. I've had
+both kinds. I moped for months over Gale Beacon, and made him and Matthew
+and father completely unhappy, lost ten pounds, and was sent to a rest-cure
+for temper. The next morning after Adam gave me the cow and calf and
+passionate embraces out in the orchard I began to work like six women, and
+what I did to Elmnest not ten women could have accomplished in as many
+days.
+
+I weeded the whole garden and I picked three bushels of our first peas,
+tied up sixty bunches of very young beets with long, tough orchard grass,
+treated fifty bunches of slender onions the same way, half a dozen of each
+to the bunch, and helped Bud Corn-tassel load a two-horse wagon with them
+and everything eatable he could get out of Aunt Mary's garden. Then I got
+up at two o'clock in the night and fed the mules so Bud could start at
+half-past two in order to be in the market at Hayesville long before the
+break of day, so as to sell the truck at the very top of the market to the
+earliest greengrocers. I gave Bud coffee and bread and butter and drove the
+team down to the gate while he went ahead to open it. I stood up while I
+drove, too, because Bud had not had room to put a seat in for himself and
+expected to stand up all the way to town. Talk about Mordkin and Pavlova!
+To stand up and drive a team hitched to a jolt-wagon over boulders and
+roots requires leg muscles! I hope I will be able to restrain myself from
+driving the team into market some day, but I am not sure I can. With the
+eggs and the "truck" Bud brought back sixteen dollars, eleven of which were
+mine. I bought a peck of green peas for myself from myself and ate most of
+them for dinner by way of blowing in some of the money. Then the chant on
+my heartstrings speeded me up to white-washing all the chicken
+paraphernalia on the place, and I dropped corn behind Rufus' plow for a
+whole day, even if it was to produce food for the swine. I went to bed at
+night literally on time with the chickens. I could only stay awake to kneel
+and reach out the arms of prayer and enfold Pan to my heart for a very few
+seconds before I vaulted into the four-poster and tumbled into the depths
+of sleep.
+
+My activities were not in any way limited by the stone walls that surround
+Elmnest, but they spread over entire Riverfield, which had very nearly quit
+the pursuit of agriculture and gone madly into a social adventure.
+Everybody was getting ready for the trip into the capital city to answer
+the governor's invitation, and clothing of every color, texture, and sex
+was being manufactured by the bolt. For every garment manufactured I was
+sponsor.
+
+"I sure am glad you have come down, Nancy," said Mrs. Addcock, with almost
+a moan; "that Mamie there won't let me turn up the hem of her dress without
+you, though I say what is a hem to a woman who has set in six pairs of
+sleeves since day before yesterday!"
+
+"I want shoe-tops and Ma wants ankles," sniffed Mamie Addcock. "Polly
+Beesley wears shoe-tops and she's seventeen and goes to the city to dance.
+And Miss Bess' and yours are shoe-tops, too."
+
+"Now you see what it is to raise a child to be led into sin and vanity,"
+said Mrs. Addcock, looking at me reproachfully from her seat upon the floor
+at the feet of the worldly Mamie.
+
+"I'll turn up the hem just right, Mrs. Addcock, while you get the collars
+on little Sammie's and Willie's shirts," I said soothingly as I sank down
+beside her at Mamie's feet.
+
+"I had to cut Sammie's shirt with a tail to tuck in, all on account of that
+Mr. Matthew Berry's telling him that shirt and pants ought to do business
+together. And there's Willie's jeans pants got to have pockets for the
+knife that Mr. Owen gave him. I just can't keep up with these city notions
+of my children with five of 'em and a weak back." As she grumbled Mrs.
+Addcock rose slowly from her lowly position to her feet.
+
+"I'll make Willie's trousers, Mrs. Addcock, this afternoon, if he'll come
+and help me feed and bed everything at Elmnest," I offered, with my mouth
+full of pins.
+
+"No, child, but thank you for your willing heart. Mrs. Spain told me how
+you made Ezra's pants so one leg of him came while the other went, and I
+guess a mother is the only one to get the legs of her own offspring to
+match. I'll work it out myself now that Miss Mamie is attended to."
+
+"But now I know how to trouser boys normally. I turned Joe Tillett out in
+perfect proportion as well as in strong jeans," I answered, without the
+least offense at finding my first efforts as a tailor thus becoming the
+subject of kindly village gossip.
+
+"Well, I hope this junket will turn out as Mary Beesley expects, with
+enjoyment for everybody. However, I'm going to risk my back with Mr.
+Silas' mules rather than with that Bessie Rutherford's wheels that are not
+critter-drawn. I only hope she don't spill all my children, that I've had
+such a time getting here on earth, back into Kingdom Come."
+
+"Would you rather go in my carriage with Mrs. Tillett, and let me go with
+Bess to hold in the children?" I asked with unconcealed eagerness.
+
+"No, I don't believe so," answered Mrs. Addcock, cannily. "Sallie Tillett
+is having her dress made buttoned up in the back, and she has been in the
+habit of feeding the baby whenever he cries for it, though he can 'most
+stand alone. She is going to depend on you and a bag of biscuit to manage
+him through the show, and I'd rather not take your place."
+
+"No; perhaps you would enjoy it more behind Uncle Silas and the mules," I
+answered cheerily, feeling perfectly capable of handling Baby Tillett and
+his bag of biscuits, because the memory of the times his little head with
+its tow fuzz had cuddled down on my linen smock, when I had carried him
+back and forth for long visits in the barn to the Peckerwood Pup so his
+mother could have a little vacation from his society, accelerated the
+movement of the chant on the cardiac instrument in my breast. "He stays
+hours and hours with me in a basket in the barn and is perfectly satisfied
+with the biscuits."
+
+"All the same I told Sallie I could make that dress by another pattern, and
+you'd better sit with him a good distance during the show," said Mrs.
+Addcock, as I finished shoe-topping Mamie and picked up my pink-lined white
+sunbonnet, which had been a present from Mrs. Addcock herself and was
+astonishingly frilly and coquettish emanating from such a source, and began
+to depart.
+
+"I'll take him on the other side of the auditorium," I answered, with
+respect for advice that I knew must be good through experience.
+
+And thus that pink and white, cooing, obstreperously hungry baby was made
+an instrument of cruel fate and--
+
+"Come over and see the little cap I've made Bennie so as to do you honor,"
+called rosy Mrs. Tillett as I went down the street towards the grocery.
+
+"I ain't got but six more yards of gingham to sew up for the two littlest,"
+Mrs. Spain called cheerily as she looked past a whirring sewing-machine out
+through a window that was wreathed with a cinnamon rose-vine in full bloom.
+
+"Want any help?" I called from the gate, which was flanked on both sides by
+blooming lilacs.
+
+"No; you go on down to the store. Mr. Silas have brought out ten suits of
+clothes for the men to pick from, and they are a-waiting for your taste.
+Persuade Joe Spain to get that purple mixed. I do love gay colors, and
+it'll go with my pink foulard."
+
+The scenes into which I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy
+in form, but serious in interpretation. The counter was piled high with
+men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the
+dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant
+angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling,
+embarrassed, harassed group of farmers in overalls. Before her stood Bud,
+attired in a light gray suit of aggressively new clothes, and she was using
+him hard as a dummy upon which to illustrate her vigorous and persuasive
+remarks.
+
+"Now, I am glad you have come down, honeybunch," she exclaimed at sight of
+me. "Here's a bale of clothes and a bale of men, and nobody can seem to
+match 'em up suitable. I have at last got Bud Beesley here into a dead
+match for his beauty, if I do say it of my own son. Just look at him!" As
+she spoke she stood off from him and folded her plump hands across her wide
+waist in motherly rapture.
+
+And Bud, with his violet eyes and yellow shock, _was_ beautiful in the
+"custom-made," fifteen-dollar gray cheviot, despite his red ears. All the
+Harpeth Valley farmer folk have French Cavalier, English gentle, and Irish
+good blood in them, with mighty little else and, as in the case of Bud and
+Polly Corn-tassel, when clothed in garments of the world, it comes to the
+surface with startling effect. Bud could have put on a gray slouch hat with
+either a crimson or an orange band and walked into any good Eastern college
+fraternity or club he might have chosen.
+
+"Shoo, Mother," said Bud as he turned around for my admiration, not
+surfeited with that of his mother.
+
+"I only hope some town girl won't catch him like your mother did William,"
+said Aunt Mary, with a laugh that ended in a little sigh that only I heard.
+Somehow I _will_ feel psychically akin to Bud and Polly.
+
+[Illustration: And Bud was beautiful in the "custom-made" fifteen-dollar
+gray cheviot with his violet eyes and yellow smock, in spite of his red
+ears]
+
+"Town girls are all movie-struck and don't want a man if a butter-paddle
+goes along with him," said Bud, with a laugh that was echoed from the
+overalled group.
+
+"Yes, but Miss Nancy here has outsold any woman in Riverfield for cash on
+eggs and chickens before May first," said Mr. Spain as he picked up a gray
+purple coat from the top of the pile on the counter.
+
+"She'll marry and go away in a big car, too," said Bud, as he looked down
+and flecked an imaginary speck from the sleeve of his new coat. Something
+in his voice made me determine to introduce Belle Proctor's little
+sixteen-year-old sister to Bud in the near future. The kiddie spends half
+her time away from school in Bess's conservatory with Mr. G. Bird's
+non-resident family, and I think it will do her good to come out in the
+field and play with Bud. She is frail and too slight.
+
+"Say, Miss Nancy, what do you think of this here purple to set me off?"
+asked Mr. Spain, as he held up the garment of his wife's desire. "Betty
+says it'll match out her dimity, and I 'low to match Betty as long as I
+can."
+
+"It'll be the very thing, Mr. Spain," I said, as I controlled my horror at
+the flaring-colored coat and reminded myself that harmony of domestic
+relations is greater than any harmony of art.
+
+"Now, pick your coats and slip 'em on, all of you, so Nancy can judge you,"
+commanded the general. In a very short time each man had got out of his
+overall jumper and into his heart's desire.
+
+A stalwart, comely, clean-eyed group of American men they were as they
+stood on parade, clothed for the most part in seemly raiment, chosen with
+Uncle Silas's quiet taste, except in the case of Mr. Spain, where he had
+let his experience of the past lead his taste.
+
+"Please, dear God, don't let them ever have to be put into khaki," I prayed
+with a quick breath, for I knew, though they did not seem to recognize the
+fact, that this rally of the rural districts in the city hall was a part
+of the great program of preparedness that America was having forced upon
+her. I knew that the speech of the governor would be about the State
+militia and I knew that Evan Baldwin would talk to them about the
+mobilization of their stocks and crops. Quick tears flooded across my eyes,
+and I stretched out my hands to them.
+
+"You all look good to me," I faltered in some of Matthew's language,
+because I couldn't think of anything else to say but the prayer in my
+heart, and I didn't want to repeat that to them.
+
+"Now, you have all passed your city examinations, so you can get back to
+work. Remember, that day after to-morrow is the junket, and one day won't
+be any too much to bank up your fires to run until you come back," said
+Aunt Mary in the way of dismissal.
+
+"Talk about vanity in women folks? The first peacock hatched out was of the
+male persuasion," she remarked as we stood at the emporium door and watched
+the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct
+for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down
+needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of
+compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we
+have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm
+pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed
+from the back door to her house on the hill and sent me out the front to
+Elmnest opposite.
+
+"I thought that there was some reason why Pan and I both chose to wear
+Roycroft clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Spain are in love after eight children," I
+remarked to myself happily. "I am in agony in any shoes Pan doesn't make. I
+wonder if any woman ever before was as much in love with a man about whom
+she knew so little--and so much as I do about Adam."
+
+"I don't want to know about him--I want to love him," I answered myself as
+I walked up the long elm avenue. Afterwards I recalled those words to
+myself, and they were bitter instead of sweet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Friday, the twenty-first of April, I shall always remember as the busiest
+day of my life, for, as Aunt Mary had said, it takes time to bank fires
+enough to keep a farm alive a whole half day even if it is not running. I
+did all my usual work with my small folk, and then I measured and poured
+out in different receptacles their existence for the last half of the next
+day. After breakfast on Saturday I finally decided upon Uncle Cradd as the
+most trustworthy person of the three ancients, one of whom I was obliged to
+depend upon for substitution. Rufus, I felt sure, would compromise by
+feeding every ration to the hogs, and I knew that he could persuade father
+to do likewise, but Uncle Cradd, I felt, would bring moral force to bear
+upon the situation.
+
+"Now, Uncle Cradd, here are all the different feeds in different buckets,
+each plainly marked with the time to give it. Please, oh, please, don't let
+father lead you off into Egypt or China and forget them," I said as I led
+him to the barn and showed him the mobilization of buckets that I had shut
+up in one of the empty bins.
+
+"Why not just empty it all out on the ground in front of the barn, Nancy,
+my dear, and let them all feed together in friendly fashion. I am afraid
+you take these pretty whims of yours too seriously," he said as he beamed
+affectionately at me over his large glasses.
+
+"Because Peckerwood Pup would eat up the Leghorn babies, and it would be
+extermination to some and survival to the most unfit," I answered in
+despair. "Oh, won't you please do it by the directions?"
+
+"I will, my child, I will," answered Uncle Cradd, as he saw that I was
+about to become tearful. "I will come and sit right here in the barn with
+my book."
+
+"Oh, if you only will, Uncle Cradd, they will remind you when they are
+hungry. Mr. G. Bird will come and peck at you when it is time to feed his
+family, and the lambs and Mrs. Ewe will lick you, and Peckerwood Pup will
+chew you, so you can't forget them," I exclaimed in relief.
+
+"That will be the exact plan for action, Nancy. You can always depend upon
+me for any of the small attentions that please you, my dear."
+
+"I can depend on the fur and feathers and wool tribes better than I can on
+you, old dear," I said to myself, while I beamed on him with a dutiful,
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+Then as Bud Corn-tassel had arrived to begin to hitch up the moth-eaten
+steeds to the ark, I ascended to my room to shed my farmer smocks, for the
+first time since my incarnation into them, and attire myself for the world
+again. The only garb of fashion I possessed, having sold myself out
+completely on my retirement, was the very stylish, dull-blue tailor suit in
+which I had traveled out the Riverfield ribbon almost three months before.
+But as that had been mid-February, it was of spring manufacture, and I
+supposed would still be able to hold its own.
+
+"It's perfectly beautiful, but it feels tight and hampering," I said as I
+descended to enter the coach Bud had driven around to the front door.
+
+"Will you give me a guarantee that you aren't just a dream lady I'll lose
+again in the city, Miss Nancy?" asked Bud, as he handed me into the
+Grandmother Craddock coach with great ceremony. Gale Beacon couldn't have
+done any better on such short notice.
+
+"I'll be in smocks at feeding-time in the morning, Bud, just as you will be
+in overalls," I answered laughingly.
+
+"My, but you are a sight!" said Mrs. Tillett, as she handed up Baby Tillett
+to me, with such a beaming countenance that I knew she meant a
+complimentary construction to be placed upon her words. "Now, just take up
+them little girls and set 'em down easy, Mr. Bud, on account of their
+ruffles, and ram the boys in between to hold 'em steady. Now, boys, if you
+muss up the girls I'll make every one of you wear your shoes all day
+to-morrow to teach you manners. Go on, Mr. Bud."
+
+Thus nicely packed away, we started on down the Riverfield ribbon at the
+head of the procession, followed by Uncle Silas driving Aunt Mary's
+rockaway, with his beautiful, dappled, shining, gray mules hitched to it,
+and beside him sat Mrs. Addcock in serene confidence in being driven by a
+man who could drive a bank and a post-office and a grocery. Mamie and
+Gertie Spain were spread out carefully on the back seat, with only one
+small masculine Spain for a wedge. The Buford buggy, all spick and span
+from its first spring washing and polishing, came next, with Mr. and Mrs.
+Buford cuddling together on the narrow seat. They were a bride and groom of
+very little over a year's standing, and the blue-blanketed bundle that the
+bride carried in her arms was no reason, in Mr. Buford's mind, why he
+shouldn't drive with one hand while he held a steadying and affectionate
+arm around them both. Buford Junior was less than a month old, but why
+shouldn't he begin to adventure out in the big world? Parson and Mrs.
+Henderson came next, he with snow-white flowing beard, and she, beside him,
+in a gray bonnet with a pink rose, while beside her sat his mother, Granny
+Henderson, now past eighty, but with a purple pansy nestled in her
+waterwaves.
+
+Others followed, and the remainder waited on the steps of the emporium,
+with Aunt Mary and Polly, for Matthew and Bess to come for them. It was
+hard for them to realize that the powerful engines in both cars would take
+them into town in little over an hour, when the journey as they before had
+made it had always consumed six, and they were becoming impatient even
+before we left. So when we met Bess and Matthew half an hour later down the
+Riverfield ribbon, I hurried them back. I afterwards learned that they had
+had to persuade Mrs. Spain to reclothe herself in the pink foulard, because
+she had decided that they were not coming and had gone back to work.
+
+In reality I didn't draw a perfectly free breath until I saw the entire
+population of Riverfield seated in advantageous seats on the middle aisle
+in the town hall at six-thirty, and beginning to get out their
+lunch-baskets to feed themselves and the kiddies before the opening of the
+convocation at eight o'clock.
+
+According to the advice of Mrs. Addcock and Mrs. Tillett herself, I had
+taken a stuffed egg, a chicken wing, and a slice of jelly-cake for my own
+supper, along with Baby Tillett's bag of hard biscuits, over on a side
+aisle, and from that vantage-point I could see the whole party.
+
+"They are lovely--the loveliest of all, mine are," I said to myself as I
+surveyed them proudly and compared them with other lunching delegations,
+which I knew to be from Providence and Hillsboro and Cloverbend.
+
+Baby Tillett crowed a proud assent as he stuck a biscuit in his mouth and
+looked at the lights with the greatest pleasure. I took off his new cap
+with its two blue bows over the ears, unbuttoned his little piqué coat,
+which I had almost entirely built myself, and which was of excellent cut,
+and settled down to dine with him in contentment.
+
+Then it happened that I was so weary from the day of excitement that I had
+hardly finished my supper before I snuggled Baby Tillett closer in my arms,
+as I felt him grow limp very suddenly, and with him I drifted off into a
+nap. I was sitting in a corner seat, but I don't yet see how I slept as I
+did and cuddled him too unless it was just the force of natural maternal
+gravitation that held my arms firmly around him, but the first thing I knew
+I opened my eyes on the whole hall full of people, who were wildly
+applauding the governor as he stepped forward on the platform. Hurriedly
+straightening my drooping head and looking guiltily around to see if I had
+been caught napping, I discovered Matthew Berry at my side in a broad
+chuckle, and I immediately suspected his stalwart right arm of being that
+force of gravitation.
+
+"He's dead to the world; let him lie across your knees and listen to the
+governor's heroics of introduction to Baldwin," said Matthew as he settled
+the limp baby across my lap with his bobbing head on my arm. And he
+adjusted his own arm less conspicuously along the seat at my back.
+
+"I was up at four," I whispered, as the applause died away and the governor
+began to speak.
+
+The Governor of the State of Harpeth is a good and substantial man, who was
+himself born out on Paradise Ridge, and he had called in all of his people
+from their fields to talk to them about a problem so serious that the
+world of men, who had hitherto considered themselves as competent to guide
+the great national ship of state through peaceful waters, had been impelled
+to turn and call to council the men from the plows and reapers, to add
+their wisdom in deciding the best methods of safeguarding the nation. His
+speech was a thoughtful presentation of the different methods of
+preparedness which the whole of America was weighing in the balance. He
+explained the army policy, the Congressional policy, and then that of the
+State guard, and he asked them to weigh the facts well so that if it should
+come to the vote of the people of the nation, they would vote with
+instructed wisdom.
+
+There was a strained gravity on all the listening faces, and I could see
+some of the women in the groups of farmer folk draw nearer against the
+shoulders of the men, who all sat with their arms along the back of the
+seats as Matthew sat beside me. Young Mrs. Buford held the precious, limp,
+blue bundle much closer in her arms, and hid her head on the broad
+shoulder next her own, but on Mrs. Spain's comely face I saw a light
+beginning to dawn as she proudly surveyed the four sturdy sons with shining
+faces who flanked her and Mr. Spain.
+
+"And now," said the governor, "I have asked you here to-night to introduce
+formally to you one of the great sons of Old Harpeth, who has come back
+from the world, with his wealth and honors and wisdom and science, into his
+own valley, to show us how to make the plowshare support the machine-gun
+with such power that the world will respect its silence more than any
+explosion. A year or more ago he came home and asked me for his commission,
+and since then he has lived among you so as to become your friend, in hopes
+that he might be your chosen leader in this food mobilization. Gentlemen
+and ladies of the Harpeth Valley, I present to you Mr. Evan Baldwin, who
+will speak to you to-night on the 'Plowshare and the Machine-gun.' Friends,
+Evan Adam Baldwin."
+
+For a second there was expectant silence, and then from the back of the
+platform from behind a group of State officials stepped--my Pan!
+
+For a long second the whole hall full of people held their breath in a
+tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and
+fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling
+crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second
+breath, which they gave forth in one long masculine hurrah mingled with a
+feminine echo of delight. For several long minutes it would not be stilled
+as he stood and smiled down on them all and mocked them with his laugh
+mingling with theirs.
+
+Finally Aunt Mary, the general, could stand it no longer, and forgetful of
+her Saint Paul, she arose with all the dignity of her two hundred pounds
+and raised her hand.
+
+"All be still, neighbors, and let Adam tell us the same things he's been
+saying for these many months, and then we'll let him shuck his fine
+clothes and come on home in my rockaway with us."
+
+"No, with us!" fairly yelled Cloverbend in unison of protest with
+Providence.
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Mary," said Pan in the fluty tenderness with which he had
+always addressed her. "The governor doesn't know it, but I can't make a
+speech to you to-night. I am going to catch that ten o'clock train for
+Argentina, to get some wheat secrets for all of us, and I want all of you
+to begin right away to plow good and deep so you'll be ready for me when I
+get back in a few months. We'll have to inoculate the land before we sow.
+Only here are just one or two things I will say to you before I have to
+start."
+
+For about ten minutes Adam stood there before those farmer folk and, with
+his fluty voice and the fire glow in his eyes, led them up upon a high
+mountain of imagination and showed them the distant land into which he
+could lead them, which, when they arrived, they would find to be their own.
+
+The baby on my lap stirred, and I lifted him against my throbbing breast
+as I listened to this gospel of a new earth, which might be made into the
+outposts of a new Heaven, in which man would nourish his weaker brother
+into a strength equal to his own, so that no man or nation would have to
+fight for existence or a place in the sun. Then while we all sat breathless
+from his magic, Pan vanished and left us to be sent home rejoicing by the
+governor.
+
+Sent home rejoicing? Suddenly I realized that when Evan Adam Baldwin had
+gone, my Pan had also vanished without a word to me. What did it mean? His
+eyes hadn't found me sitting apart from my delegation with another woman's
+baby in my arms. Would there be a word for me in the morning?
+
+"In Baldwin emerges the new American," said Matthew, with a light in his
+face I had never seen before, as we all rose to go.
+
+"Do you blame every woman in the world for being mad about him when you saw
+that look in his eyes when he held out his hands and chanted that food
+plea to us? I'm glad he doesn't beckon to me, or I am afraid Owen Murray
+and Madam Felicia would be disappointed about that June decision of mine,"
+said Bess as she and Owen helped Bud pack the Tilletts and me into the ark
+for our return trip.
+
+"Will there be word for me in the morning?" the old wheels rattled all the
+way out the Riverfield ribbon, and I thought an old owl hooted the question
+at me from a dead tree beside the road, while I felt also that a
+mocking-bird sang it from a thicket of dogwood in ghostly bloom opposite.
+"Will there be word in the morning?"
+
+The next morning I awoke with the same question making a new motive in the
+chant on my heartstrings.
+
+"Uncle Cradd will bring his letter when he comes back from the post-office,
+and I know he'll send a message to you, Mr. G. Bird," I said happily, as I
+watered and fed and caressed and joyed in the entire barn family. "I hate
+him for being what he is and treating me this way, but I love him still
+more," I confided to Mrs. Ewe as I gave her an extra handful of wheat out
+of the blouse-pocket which I kept filled for Mr. G. Bird from pure
+partiality.
+
+Uncle Cradd did not bring a letter from the post-office for me. The blow in
+the apple orchard and the purple plumes on the lilac bushes looked less
+brilliant in hue, but the tune on my heartstrings kept up a note of pure
+bravado. I weeded the garden all afternoon, but stopped early, fed early,
+and went up-stairs to my room before the last sunset glow had faded off the
+dormer windows. Opening my old mahogany chest, I took out a bundle I had
+made up the day after the advent of Mother Cow and the calf, spread it out
+on the bed, and looked it over.
+
+In it was an incredible amount of lingerie, made of crêpe de chine and
+lace, folded tightly and tied with a ribbon into a package not over a foot
+square. A comb and a brush of old ivory, which had set in its back a small
+mirror held in by a silver band, which father had purchased in Florence
+for me under a museum guaranty as a genuine Cellini work of art, were
+wrapped in a silk case, and a toothbrush and soap had occupied their
+respective oil-silk cases along with a tube of tooth paste and one of cold
+cream. Two pairs of soft, but strong, tan cotton stockings were tucked
+underneath the ribbon confining the lingerie, and a small prayer-book with
+both mine and my mother's name in it completed the--I hadn't exactly liked
+to call it a trousseau. It was all tied up in one of Adam's Romney
+handkerchiefs, which he had washed out one day in the spring branch and
+left hanging on a hickory sapling to dry, and which I had appropriated
+because I loved its riot of faded colors.
+
+"It is just about the size of his," I had said to myself as I had tied up
+its corners that day after my love adventure in the orchard under the
+chaperonage of Mother Cow, and I had laughed as I imagined Pan's face when
+he discovered that I had been so entirely unfemininely subservient to his
+command about light traveling. Suddenly I swept the bundle together and
+back in the chest, while a note of genuine fear swept into the song in my
+heart.
+
+"He'll write from New Orleans--he doesn't sail until to-morrow," I
+whispered as I quieted the discord and went down to prayers.
+
+    "I shall not want.
+      He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
+        he leadeth me beside the still waters.
+      He restoreth my soul:"
+
+intoned Uncle Cradd, and somehow the tumult in my heart was stilled for the
+night, and I could as usual take Pan into my prayer arms and ask God to
+keep him safe. I wonder how many women would really pray if there weren't
+men in the world to furnish them the theme!
+
+Also I wonder how it is possible for me to write about that following first
+week of May when I had to feel the chant die out of my heart and still
+live and help a lot of other live creatures, both people and animals, to go
+on breathing also.
+
+Each day Uncle Cradd failed to bring me a letter from the post-office, and
+after a week I ceased to look for one. I knew that Evan Adam Baldwin was on
+the high seas and that if he had not written before he sailed he never
+intended to write. My common sense kindly and plainly spoke this truth to
+my aching heart: Pan had been simply having a word adventure with me in
+character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The beginning of the twentieth century has witnessed many startling
+inventions, reforms, evolutions, and revolutions, but mankind generally is
+not aware that the most remarkable result of many combined new forces is a
+woman whose intellect can go on functioning at the same time that her heart
+is aching with either requited or unrequited love. Just ten days after I
+had been jilted, instead of lying in a darkened room in hysterics, I went
+into a light corner of the barn, sat down on an upturned seed-bucket, took
+my farm-book on my knee, wet my pencil between my lips, and began to figure
+up the account between Evan Adam Baldwin and myself. First, I sat still for
+a long second and tried to set a price on myself the hour before I had
+first encountered him out on the Riverfield ribbon on the day I had made
+my entry into rural life. And think as hard as I could I couldn't think up
+a single thing I had done worth while to my race; so I had to write a great
+cipher against myself. Then in another column I set down the word "assets,"
+and after it I wrote, "The Golden Bird and family, eight hundred dollars."
+Then I thought intently back into the past and into the haircloth trunk and
+wrote, "Clothes, one hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+Then I sat for another long time and looked out the door to the Paradise
+Ridge across the Harpeth Valley, after which I smoothed the page, dated it,
+and again began to take stock of myself and the business. I listed the
+original investment of Mr. G. Bird and the ladies Leghorn, one of which was
+at that moment picking wheat from my pocket, on through their fifty
+progeny, for which I had established a price of twenty dollars per head,
+through the two lambkins I had bought from Rufus for ten dollars, Mother
+Cow and the calf, the hundred and fifty pearls in the incubators, half of
+which I had sold to Owen and Bess and ten of which I had sold to a real
+chicken dealer who knew Mr. G. Bird's pedigree and had come all the way
+from Georgia to buy them. The whole inventory, including the wheat I had
+paid Matthew for and the improvements I had made on the barn, or rather
+Adam had made, also including the prospects in the garden, amounted to
+eighteen hundred dollars. Then I thought still longer and finally after my
+own name wrote one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of "education." The
+total was nineteen hundred and fifty dollars, thus making a profit on my
+investments of about eight hundred dollars. After this calculation I sat
+and chewed the pencil a long time, then turned a fresh page, wrote, "Evan
+Adam Baldwin," on the one side, "Profit" in the middle, and a large cipher
+opposite.
+
+Then I closed the book forever with such decision that the Leghorn lady and
+Mrs. Ewe, who was helping her explore me, both jumped, and I rose to my
+feet.
+
+"I got eight hundred and fifty dollars out of the deal, and Evan Adam
+Baldwin only got a few mediocre and amateur kisses, which he shared with
+me, for all his hard labor in plowing and tilling and restoring Elmnest and
+me to the point of being of value in the scheme of things. I got the best
+of that deal and why should I sulk?" I said to myself in a firm and even
+tone of voice. I didn't.
+
+If I had worked like a couple of women when speeded up by a weird chant on
+my heartstrings, which I now recognized was just a part of the system used
+in my reorganization, I worked like five when my heart became perfectly
+dead and silent. I got out of my bed the very minute that the first gleam
+of consciousness came into my mind, before I could have a second to think
+about anything unprofitable, plunged into the old brass-bound cedar tub of
+cold water, which I had carried up from the spring in a bucket that matched
+it the night before, got into my corduroys and smock, and was out in the
+barn and at work before it would seem possible for a woman to more than
+open her eyes of understanding upon the world. All day long I weeded and
+hoed and harvested and fed and cleaned and marketed that farm until I fell
+dead between the posts of the old bed at night.
+
+I didn't pray. I knew God would understand.
+
+And through it all there was Matthew! The first week or two he remonstrated
+with me; then when he saw that I was possessed by the demon of work he just
+rolled up his sleeves, collected Polly and Bud, and helped. He promoted his
+best clerk in the office to a junior partnership, refused several important
+cases, bought the hundred-acre forest which joins Elmnest, which Aunt Mary
+had had in her family for generations, and which had been considered as
+waste land after the cedars had been cut off, and began to restore it. He
+never bothered me once in a sentimental way, and when he brought the plans
+of his house over on the knoll opposite Elmnest, Polly helped me enthuse
+and criticize them, and he went away seemingly content. His and Polly's
+Rhode Island Reds were rivaling my Leghorns in productiveness, and all of
+Riverfield seemed to have gone chicken mad. Mr. Spain traded a prize hog
+for a cock, and twelve black Minorca hens, and Mr. Buford brought the bride
+two settings of gray "Rocks" to start a college education for the bundle.
+
+"Do you know what the whole kit and biling is so busy about?" said Aunt
+Mary as she surveyed with pride a new hen-house that Bud had just finished,
+in which I saw the trap nests over which she had disputed with the
+commissioner of agriculture. "They were just woke up by that speech of
+Adam's, and they are getting ready to show him what Riverfield can do when
+he gets back. When did you say you expect him, honeybunch?"
+
+"I don't," I answered quietly.
+
+"Why, I thought Silas said you did," she answered absent-mindedly. "Now,
+you can have Bud, but not for keeps, because as I borned him I think I am
+entitled to work him." We all laughed as Bud and I betook ourselves and a
+large farm-basket full of late cabbage plants across to Elmnest.
+
+"Miss Ann, please ma'am, make mother let me go to town to-night with Mr.
+Matthew and stay with Miss Bess. All her linen chest has come, and I want
+to see it," Polly Corn-tassel waylaid us and pleaded. I went back and laid
+the case before her mother.
+
+"Well, I suppose it won't hurt her if all this marriage and giving in
+marriage don't get into her head. I aim to keep and work her at least two
+years longer to pay my trouble with her teething back," agreed Aunt Mary.
+"When did you say the wedding was going to be?"
+
+"June tenth," I answered.
+
+"I heard that Mr. Owen Murray talking to Mr. Spain about his wooded piece
+of land over by the big spring the other night. Looks like you are a pot
+of honey, sure enough, child, that draws all your friends to settle around
+you."
+
+"No, it's the back-to-the-land vogue, and this is the most beautiful part
+of the Harpeth Valley," I answered as I again began to depart with Bud and
+the cabbage plants.
+
+"Adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the Garden of Eden
+was located right here. It was when your locusts were in full bloom and I
+asked him if he had run down Eve anywhere. Are you sure you don't know when
+he'll come back to see us all?" Aunt Mary's blue eyes danced with
+merriment.
+
+"No," I answered, and went hastily back to Bud and left her muttering to
+herself, "Well, Silas _did_ say--"
+
+All afternoon I stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts
+behind Bud's hoe and refused even to think about Bess's wedding-chest. But
+at sunset I saw I must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of
+her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that I had sold and then borrowed
+back from her--or have a serious crisis in our friendship. I hadn't
+strength for that, and I had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise
+enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn't,
+though there was a positive uproar when Owen brought the whole Bird
+collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the
+dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as
+to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom.
+
+"Why is it, Matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here
+in the dark and not make me say a word?" I asked him as he brought me home
+in the after-midnight hush.
+
+"You've trained my heart into silence, Ann," he answered gently.
+
+"No!" I exclaimed, for I couldn't bear the thought of Matthew's big heart
+being silent too. Just then Polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat,
+fell off and had to be rescued. We put her out at home in a wilted
+condition from pure good times, and then Matthew took me on up to Elmnest.
+An old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black
+shadows, and Matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was
+quiet and well.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" I exclaimed as I ran to the side of the shed in
+which Mrs. Ewe and the lambs resided. "Strike your cigar-lighter quick,
+Matt."
+
+As Matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, I sank
+to my knees with a cry. There upon the grass lay one of my lambkins, and
+red blood was oozing from its woolly white throat. As I lifted it on my
+arm, its little body gave a shudder and then lay so still that I knew it
+was dead. Mother Ewe stood near in the shadow and gave a plaintive bleat as
+she came to my side.
+
+"Oh," I sobbed as I looked up at Matthew, "it's dead. What did it?"
+
+"A dog," answered Matthew, as he knelt beside me and laid the tiny dead
+lamb back on the ground.
+
+"Not Peckerwood Pup!" I exclaimed.
+
+"No, she's too young; some stray," answered Matthew as he look savagely
+around into the shadows.
+
+"It's the littlest one, and she licked my hand the last thing before I
+left. I can't bear it all, Matthew--this is too much for me," I said, and I
+sobbed into my hands as I sank down into a heap against the side of the
+bereaved sheep mother, who was still uttering her plaintive moans of
+question.
+
+I say now and I shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in
+the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who
+has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows
+her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms.
+Matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his
+breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel
+that a new day could dawn upon the world. I think from the way I huddled to
+his strength that he knew that I had given up the fight and that his hour
+was at hand.
+
+"Do you want me now, Ann?" he asked me; gently as he pressed his cheek
+against my hair.
+
+"If you want me, take me and help me find that dog to-morrow," I answered
+as I again reached out my hand and put it for the last time on the pathetic
+little woolly head. I couldn't hold back the sob.
+
+"Go in the house to bed, dear, for you are completely worn out. I'll bury
+the lamb and look for any traces that may help us to find the savage," said
+Matthew as he drew me to my feet and with quiet authority led me to the
+back door and opened it for me. For a second I let him take me again into
+his strong arms, but I wilted there and I simply could not raise my lips to
+his. The first time I remember kissing Matthew Berry was at his own tenth
+birthday party, and he had dropped a handkerchief behind me that I had
+failed to see as all of the budding flower and chivalry of Hayesville stood
+in a ring in his mother's drawing-room.
+
+"Dear old Matt," I murmured to myself as I again fell dead between the
+posts of the ancestral bed.
+
+The next morning I awoke to a new world--or rather I turned straight about
+and went back into my own proper scheme of existence. At the crack of dawn
+I wakened and set my muscles for the spring from my pillows, then I
+stretched my arms, yawned, snuggled my cheek into those same pillows, and
+deliberately went to sleep, covering up my head with the old embroidered
+counter-pane to shut out from my ears a clarion crow from beyond my
+windows. When I next became conscious old Rufus' woolly head was peering
+anxiously into my room door, and I judged from the length of the shadows
+that the sun cast from the windows that it must be after ten o'clock.
+
+"Am you sick?" he inquired with belligerent solicitude.
+
+"No, Rufus, and I'm going back to sleep. Call me in time to have dinner
+with father and Uncle Cradd," I answered as I again burrowed into the
+pillows.
+
+"I give that there rooster and family a bucket of feed," said Rufus
+begrudgingly, and he stood as if waiting to be praised for thus burying the
+hatchet that he had been mentally brandishing over the neck of the enemy.
+
+I made no response, but stretched my tired limbs out between the silky old
+sheets and again lost consciousness.
+
+The next time I became intelligent it was when Polly's soft arm was slid
+under my neck and her red lips applied to my cheek.
+
+"Miss Ann, are you ill?" she questioned frantically. "Mr. Matthew and I
+have been here for hours and have fed and attended to everything. He made
+me come up because he was afraid you might be dead."
+
+"I am, Polly, and now watch me come back to life," I said as I sat up and
+blinked at the sun coming in through the western window, thus proclaiming
+the time as full afternoon.
+
+"We found Mr. G. Bird and all of the other--" Polly was beginning to say
+when I cut her short.
+
+"Polly, dear, please go tell Matthew to ride down to the bank and telephone
+Bess that I'm coming in to stay a week with her and to invite Belle and
+Owen and the rest to dinner. By the time he gets back I'll be ready to go."
+As I spoke I threw the sheet from me and started to arise, take up my life,
+and walk.
+
+"But who'll attend to the chickens and--" Polly fairly gasped.
+
+"I don't know and I don't care, and if you want to go in to dinner with us,
+Polly, you had better hurry on, for you'll have to beg your mother hard," I
+said, and at the suggestion Polly fairly flew.
+
+I don't exactly know what Polly told Matthew about me, but his face was a
+study as I descended elegantly clad and ready to go to town with him.
+
+"Good, dear!" he said as I raised my lips to his and gave him a second
+edition of that ring-around-rosy kiss. "I knew you would wear yourself out.
+I have telephoned Owen to motor out that young Belgian that Baldwin got
+down to run my farm, and he'll take charge of everything while you rest."
+
+"I don't care whether he comes or not," I said as I walked towards the
+library door to say good-by to my parent twins, who hardly noticed me at
+all on account of a knotty disagreement in some old Greek text they were
+digging over.
+
+"Well, you needn't worry about--" Matthew was continuing to say, with the
+deepest uncertainty in his face and voice.
+
+"I won't," I answered. "Did Bess say she could get enough people together
+to dance to-night?"
+
+"We'll all go out to the country club and have a great fling," said
+Matthew, with the soothing tone of voice that one would use to a friend
+temporarily mentally deranged. "Hope Mother Corn-tassel lets Polly go."
+
+"There she is waiting at the gate for us with her frills in a bundle. Swoop
+her up, Matt, and fly for fear she is getting off without Aunt Mary's
+seeing her. Aunt Mary is so bent on keeping Polly's milking hand in."
+
+"That young Belgian says he's a good milker, and you needn't worry about--"
+
+"I won't," I again answered Matthew, and there was snap enough in my eyes
+and voice to make him whistle under his breath as he literally swooped up
+Polly, and they both had the good sense to begin to talk about town affairs
+and leave unmentioned all rural matters.
+
+Half-way into town Matthew swapped me for his Belgian in Owen's car, and
+Polly and I went on in with Owen and Bess, while Matthew returned out the
+Riverfield ribbon to install the rescuer of Elmnest.
+
+"Oh, Ann, this is delicious," said Bess as she came back with me to cuddle
+me and ask questions. "But what are--"
+
+"Bess," I said, looking her straight in the face with determination, "I am
+going to marry Matt two days before you marry Owen, though he doesn't know
+it yet, and if you talk about Elmnest to me I'll go and stay with Belle
+this week."
+
+"How perfectly lovely, and how tired you are, poor dear!" Bess
+congratulated and exclaimed all in the same breath, then imparted both my
+announcement and my injunction to Owen on the front seat. I didn't look at
+Polly while Owen was laughing and exclaiming, but when I did she looked
+queer and quiet; however, I didn't let that at all affect the nice crisp
+crust that had hardened on me overnight. And I must say that if Corn-tassel
+wasn't happy that evening surrounded by the edition of masculine society
+that Matt had so carefully expurgated for her, she ought to have been.
+
+By that time I had told Matthew about his approaching marriage, accepted
+his bear-hug of joy, delivered before Bess and Polly and Owen and Belle,
+and I had been congratulated and received back into the bosom of my friends
+with great joy and hilarity.
+
+"Now I can take care of you forever and ever, Ann," whispered Matthew in
+his good-night, with his lips against my ear. And there in his strong,
+sustaining arms, even though limp with fatigue, I knew I never did, could,
+or would, love anybody like I loved him. I don't really suppose I did hear
+Polly sob on her pillow beside mine, where she had insisted on reposing.
+She must have been all right, for she was gone out into the rural district
+with Matthew before I was awake the next morning.
+
+After Annette had served mine and Bess's chocolate in Bess's bedroom we
+settled down to the real seriousness of trousseau talk, which lasted for
+many long hours.
+
+"Now if I sell you back all the things of yours I haven't worn for two
+hundred and fifty dollars that will leave you over three hundred in the
+bank to get a few wash frocks and hats and things to last you until you are
+enough married to Matthew to use his money freely," said Bess after about
+an hour of discussion and admiration of her own half-finished trousseau.
+
+"Yes; I should say those things would be worth about two hundred and fifty
+dollars now that they are third-hand," I answered Bess's excited eyes,
+giving her a look of well-crusted affection, for there are not many women
+in the world, with unlimited command of the material that Bess has, who
+would not have offered me a spiritual hurt by trying to give me back my
+thousand dollars' worth of old clothes which she had not needed in the
+first place when she bought them.
+
+"Now, that's all settled, and we'll begin to stretch that three hundred
+dollars to its limit. We won't care if things do tear, just so they look
+smart until you and Matthew get to New York. Matthew won't be the first
+bridegroom to go into raptures over a thirty-nine-cent bargain silk made
+up by a sixty-dollar dressmaker. I'm giving Owen a few deceptions in that
+line myself. That gray and purple tissue splits if you look at it, and I
+got it all for three dollars. Felicia made it up mostly with glue, I think,
+and I will be a dream in it--a dream that dissolves easily. Let's go
+shopping." As she thus led me into the maze of dishonest trousseau-buying,
+Bess began to ring for Annette.
+
+Of course most women in the world will refuse to admit that shopping can
+arouse them from any kind of deadness that the sex is heir to, but a few
+frank ones, like myself, for instance, will say such to be the case. For
+three weeks I gave myself up to a perfect debauch of clothes, and ended off
+each day's spree by dancing myself into a state of exhaustion. Everybody in
+Hayesville wanted to give Bess and me parties, and most of them did, that
+is, as many as we could get in at the rate of three a day between
+dressmakers and milliners and other clothing engagements. Owen got
+perfectly furious and exhausted, but Matthew kept in an angelic frame of
+mind through it all. I think the long days with Polly out in the open
+helped him a lot, though at times I detected a worried expression on the
+faces of them both, and I felt sure that they were dying to tell me that it
+had been a case of the razor from Rufus' shoe between him and the Belgian
+or that the oil was of the grade that explodes incubators, but I gave them
+no encouragement and only inquired casually from time to time if the
+parental twins were alive. Polly even tried me out with a bunch of roses,
+which I knew came from the old musk clump in the corner of the garden which
+I had seen rebudded, but I thanked her coldly and immediately gave them to
+Belle's mother. I saw Matthew comforting her in the distance, and his face
+was tenderly anxious about me all the rest of the evening.
+
+"Dear, are we going to be--be married in town at a church?" Matthew
+inquired timidly one afternoon as he drove me home from a devastated hat
+shop on the avenue, in which Bess and I had been spending the day.
+
+"No, Matt dear, at Elmnest," I answered kindly, as a bride, no matter how
+worn out, ought to answer a groom, though Bess says that a groom ought to
+expect to be snapped every time he speaks for ten days before the wedding.
+"As long as I have got a home that contains two masculine parents I will
+have to be married in it. I'll go out the morning of the wedding, and you
+and Polly fix everything and invite everybody in Riverfield, but just the
+few people here in town you think we ought to have, not more than a dozen.
+Have it at five o'clock." I thought then that I fixed that hour because
+everybody would hate it because of the heat and uncertainty as to style of
+clothes.
+
+"All right, dear," answered Matthew, carefully, as if handling
+conversational eggs.
+
+"Miss Ann, where do you want us to fix the wedding--er--bell and altar?"
+Polly ventured to ask timidly a few days later.
+
+"The parlor, of course, Polly. I hate that room, and it is as far from the
+barn as possible. Now don't bother me any more about it," I snapped, and
+sent her flying to Matthew in consternation. Later I saw them poring over
+the last June-bride number of "The Woman's Review," and I surmised the kind
+of a wedding I was in for. That day I tried on a combination of tull, lace,
+and embroidery at Felicia's that tried my soul as well as my body.
+
+"It's no worse than any other wedding-dress I ever saw; take it off quick,
+Madame," I snapped as crossly as I dared at the poor old lady, who had
+gowned me from the cradle to the--I was about to say grave.
+
+"Eh, la la, _mais_, you are _très deficile_--difficult," she murmured
+reproachfully.
+
+"Any more so than Bess?" I demanded.
+
+"_Non_, perhaps _non_," she answered, with a French shrug.
+
+With beautiful tact Matthew fussed with his throttle, which I couldn't see
+stuck at all, the entire time he was driving me home, and left me with a
+careful embrace and also with relief in his face that I hadn't exploded
+over him. Owen is not like that to Bess; he just pours gas on her
+explosions and fans the resulting flame until it is put out by tears in his
+arms.
+
+"Let's never get married at the same time any more, Ann," groaned Bess as
+Annette tried to put us both to bed that night before we fell dead on her
+hands.
+
+"Don't speak to me!" was my answer as nearly as I can remember.
+
+"I'll be glad to get Bess away from your influence," raged Owen at me the
+next day when I very nearly stepped on one of the little chickens that he
+was having run in and out from the conservatory.
+
+"You'll want to bring her back in a week if both your tempers don't
+improve," was my cutting reply as this time I lifted another of his small
+pets with the toe of my slipper and literally flung it across the room.
+
+"Great guns!" exploded Owen, as he retreated into the conservatory and
+shut the door.
+
+The next night was the sixth of June and the night of my wedding eve. All
+Bess's bridesmaids and groomsmen were dining with her to rehearse her
+wedding and to have a sort of farewell bat with Matthew and me.
+
+"What about your and Ann's wedding to Matthew, Miss Polly?" I heard Cale
+Johnson ask Polly as she and Matthew were untangling a bolt of wide,
+white-satin ribbon that I had tangled. "All the show to be of rustics?"
+
+"Nobody but Polly is going to stand by us," said Matthew, looking
+cautiously around to see if I was listening. "Ann doesn't believe in making
+much fuss over a wedding."
+
+"I didn't know I was to be in it until Miss Bess took me to be fitted--oh,
+it is a dream of a dress, isn't it, Mr. Matthew?" said Polly, with her
+enthusiasm also tempered by a glance in my direction.
+
+"It sure is," answered Matthew, with the greatest approval, as he regarded
+Polly with parental pride.
+
+"Well, I'm glad I'm invited to see it," said Cale as he glanced at Polly
+tenderly. "I mean to be at the wedding, Matt," he added politely. Cale was
+to be best man with Polly as maid of honor at Bess's wedding, and he had
+been standing and sitting close at Polly's side for more than ten days.
+
+"Let's try it all over again, everybody," called Bess's wearied voice,
+interrupting Polly's enthusiastic description of ruffles.
+
+The wedding day was a nightmare. Annette and the housemaid and Bess and a
+girl from Madame Felicia's packed up three trunks full of my clothes and
+sent them all to the station.
+
+"I wish I never had to see them again," I said viciously under my breath as
+the expressmen carried out the last trunk.
+
+"Now, dear, in these two suitcases are your wedding things and your
+going-away gown. Your dress is in the long box and we will send them all
+out early in the morning in my car. Matthew will drive us out as soon as we
+can get ready," Bess had said the night before, as she sank on my bed and
+spread out with fatigue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The next morning it took Annette until ten o'clock and a shower of tears to
+get Bess and me to sit up and take our coffee. She said the decorators were
+downstairs beginning on Bess's wedding decorations and that the sun was
+shining on my wedding-day.
+
+"Well, I wish it had delayed itself a couple of hours. I'm too sleepy to
+get married," I grumbled as I sat up to take the tray of coffee on my
+knees.
+
+"Owen is a darling," I heard Bess murmur from her bed, which was against
+the wall and mine as our rooms opened into each other. I also heard a
+rustle of paper and smelled the perfume of flowers.
+
+"This is for Mademoiselle from Monsieur Berry," said Annette, as she
+triumphantly produced a white box tied with white ribbons that lay in the
+center of a bunch of wild field-roses.
+
+"Take it away and let me drink my coffee," I said, and I could see
+Annette's French eyes snap as she laid down the offering from Matthew and
+went to attend upon Bess.
+
+"Dear Matt," I murmured when I had consumed the coffee and discovered the
+long string of gorgeous pearls in the white box. "Come on, Bess, let's
+begin to get married and be done with it," I called to her as I wearily
+arose. "What time did Polly say she and Matthew had decided to marry me?" I
+asked as I went into my bath.
+
+"Five o'clock, and it's almost twelve now," answered Bess in a voice of
+panic as I heard things begin to fly into place in her room.
+
+Despite the superhuman efforts and patience of Annette and two housemaids,
+directed from below by Owen and Judge Rutherford, it was half-past two
+o'clock before I was ready to descend to the car in which Matthew had been
+sitting, patiently waiting in the sunshine of his wedding day for almost
+two hours.
+
+"Plenty of time," he said cheerily, as I sank into the seat beside him, and
+Bess and Owen climbed in behind us. Owen's chauffeur took Judge Rutherford
+in Owen's car, and Annette perched her prim self on the front seat beside
+the wheel.
+
+"Oh, Matt, there is nobody in the world like you," I said as I cast myself
+on his patience and imperturbability and also the strength of his broad
+shoulder next mine. I could positively hear Bess and Owen's joy over this
+bride-like manifestation, which the wind took back to them as we went
+sailing out of town towards the Riverfield ribbon.
+
+And to their further joy I put my cheek down against Matthew's throttle arm
+and closed my eyes so that I did not see anything of the twenty-mile
+progression out to Elmnest. I only opened them when we arrived in
+Riverfield at about half after three o'clock.
+
+Was the village out to greet me? It was not. Every front door was closed,
+and every front shutter shut, and I might have felt that some dire
+disapproval was being expressed of me and my wedding if I had not seen
+smoke fairly belching from every kitchen chimney, and if I hadn't known
+that each house was filled with the splash of vigorous tubbing for which
+the kitchen stoves and wash boilers were supplying the hot water.
+
+"Bet at least ten pounds of soap has gone up in lather," said Matthew as he
+turned and explained the situation to Bess and Owen after I had explained
+it to him.
+
+At the door of Elmnest stood Polly in a gingham dress, but with both ends
+of her person in bridal array, from the white satin bows on the looped up
+plats to the white silk stockings and satin slippers, greeting us with
+relief and enthusiasm. Beside her stood Aunt Mary and the parent twins,
+also Bud, in the gray suit with a rose in his button-hole.
+
+Matthew handed me out and into their respective embraces, while he also
+gave Polly a bundle of dry-goods from which I could see white satin ribbon
+bursting.
+
+"Everything is ready," she confided to him.
+
+"I knew it would be, Corn-tassel," he answered, with an expression of
+affectionate confidence and pride.
+
+Then from the embrace of Uncle Cradd I walked straight through the back
+door towards the barn, leaving both Bess and Annette in a state of wild
+remonstrance, with the wedding paraphernalia all being carried up the
+stairs by Bud and Rufus. Looking neither to the right nor to the left, I
+made my way to the barn-door and then stopped still--dead still.
+
+It was no longer my barn--it was merely the entrance to a model poultry
+farm that spread out acres and acres of model houses and runs behind it.
+Chickens, both white and red, were clucking and working in all the pens,
+and nowhere among them could I see the Golden Bird.
+
+"I hope he's dead, too," I said as I turned on my heel and, without a
+word, walked back to the house and up to my room, past Polly and Matthew,
+who stood at the barn-door, their faces pale with anxiety.
+
+When I considered that I had been able for months to clothe myself with
+decency and leave my room in less than fifteen minutes, I could not see why
+time dragged so for me when being clothed by Annette and Aunt Mary. True,
+Aunt Mary paused to sniff into her handkerchief every few minutes or to
+listen to Annette's French raptures as she laid upon me each foolish
+garment up unto the long swath of heathenish tulle she was beginning to
+arrange when an interruption occurred in the shape of Rufus, who put his
+head in the door and mysteriously summoned Polly, who had come in to
+exhibit her silk muslin frills, in which she was the incarnation of young
+love's dream.
+
+"You are beautiful, darling," I had just said, with the first warmth in my
+voice I had felt for many days, when Rufus appeared and Polly departed to
+leave Annette and Aunt Mary to the task of the tulle and orange-blossoms.
+They took their time, and it was only five minutes to five when Bess came
+in to get her procession all marshalled.
+
+"Come down the back steps, darling, and let's all cool off on the back
+porch," she advised. "It is terribly hot up here under the roof, and Polly
+and Matthew say they have decided to come in from the back door so
+everybody will have a better view of you. How beautiful you are!"
+
+As directed, I descended and stood spread out like a white peacock on the
+back porch.
+
+"Now call Matthew and Polly," Bess directed Annette.
+
+For several minutes we waited.
+
+"Monsieur Berry is not here," finally reported Annette, with fine dramatic
+effect of her outspread hands.
+
+"Tell Owen to find him," commanded Bess. "It is five minutes late now, and
+they must make that seven-twenty New York train. Hurry!"
+
+Annette departed while Aunt Mary came to the back door and looked out
+questioningly.
+
+"Great guns, Bess, where is Matt?" demanded Owen as he came around the
+house with his eyes and hair wild.
+
+"Where is Polly? she'll know!" I answered tranquilly.
+
+"I searched Mademoiselle Polly, and she is also not here," answered
+Annette, again running down the back stairs. From the long parlor and hall
+came an excited buzz, and Aunt Mary came out upon the back porch entirely
+this time.
+
+"Every one of you go and look for them and leave me here quiet if you don't
+want me to have a brain storm," I said positively. "They have probably gone
+to feed the chickens."
+
+Not risking me to make good my threat, Bess and Annette and Aunt Mary and
+Owen and Bud disappeared in as many different directions. They left me
+standing alone out on the old porch, along the eaves of which rioted a
+rose, literally covered with small pink blossoms that kept throwing
+generous gusts of rosy petals down upon my tulle and lace and the bouquet
+of exotics I held in my hand. Across the valley the skyline of Paradise
+Ridge seemed to be holding down huge rosy clouds that were trying to bubble
+up beyond it.
+
+Suddenly I drew aside the tulle from my face, dropped my bouquet, and
+stretched out my arms to the sunset.
+
+"I will lift up mine eyes to the hills--Oh, Pan!" I said in a soft agony of
+supplication as I felt the crust around me begin a cosmic upheaval.
+
+"Well, this looks like a Romney bundle and my woman to follow into the
+woods. You know I won't have this kind of a wedding," suddenly fluted a
+stormy voice from the other side of the rose vine as Pan came up to the
+bottom of the steps.
+
+"Why--why," I began to say, and then stopped, because the storm was still
+bursting over my head from Pan, who was attired in his usual Roycroft
+costume and had in one hand the Romney bundle and in the other the usual
+white bundle of herbs. Also as usual he was guiltless of a hat, and the
+crests were unusually long and ruffled.
+
+"You look foolish, and I won't marry you that way. Go straight up-stairs
+and put on real clothes, get your bundle, and come on. I want to eat supper
+over on Sky Rock, and it is seven miles, and you'll have to cook it. I'm
+hungry," he stormed still more furiously.
+
+"Everybody is inside waiting, and it's not your--"
+
+"Well, tell 'em all to come out in the open. I won't take a mate in a
+house, even if it has to be done with this foolish paper," he continued to
+rage as he sought in the bandana bundle and produced an official document
+with a red tape on it. "You go and put on your clothes, and I'll break up
+this foolishness and get 'em in the yard."
+
+"But wait--you don't understand. You--"
+
+"You've got all the rest of your life to explain disobeying me like this
+when I expressly wrote you just what I wanted you to--" Pan went on with
+his raging. At this juncture Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door in mild
+excitement.
+
+"Nancy, my child, our friends are growing impatient, and is there anything
+the--"
+
+But here he was interrupted by a clamor of voices that fairly poured its
+volume around the corner of the house. In two seconds it explained itself
+by its very appearance. First came Matthew, walking slowly, and in his arms
+he carried a soaked bundle which he held to his breast as tenderly, I was
+sure, as young Mrs. Buford was holding the blue bundle in the parlor, and
+two long plaits hung down over his arm. From between him and the bundle
+there came a feeble squawking and fluttering of wings. From them all poured
+rivulets of water, and mingled with the squawks were weak gurgles. As I
+looked, Matthew stopped and lifted the bundle closer on his breast,
+disclosing its identity as that of Polly, and buried his face in the
+soaked hair while they all stood dripping together as the rest of us stood
+perfectly silent and still.
+
+"That fool Henri let the Golden Bird get away, and he flew across the river
+and fell in a tangle of undergrowth. Rufus called Polly, and she plunged
+right in after him. Her dress caught on the same snag and God, Ann, they
+were being sucked under just as I got to them. She's still unconscious." In
+some ways as unconscious as was the Corn-tassel, Matthew began to press hot
+kisses on the face under his chin which brought forth a feeble choke.
+
+"Lay her down on the porch, and I'll show you how to empty her lungs,
+Berry," said Adam, laying down his bundle and taking charge of the
+situation, as all the rest, even capable Aunt Mary, still stood helpless
+before the catastrophe. Reluctantly, Matthew obeyed.
+
+"Uncle Cradd, go in the house and tell them all what has happened, and ask
+them all to come out on the cool of the lawn until we can have the
+wedding. It will be in just a few minutes, tell them," I said, with the
+brain that had taken the incubator eggs to bed with Bess and me beginning
+to act rapidly. "Let me speak to you just a second, Matt," I said, and drew
+the dazed and dripping bridegroom to one side.
+
+"Matthew," I said very quietly and slowly so that I would not have to
+repeat the words, "I'm not going to marry you at all, but I'm going to
+marry Evan Baldwin. I'll tell you all about it when I come back from my
+honeymoon with him. You help me put it through and then stay right here and
+look after Polly. She may suffer terribly from shock."
+
+"Oh, God, Ann, my heart turned over in my breast and kicked when I saw her
+sink, and for a minute I couldn't find her," Matthew said as he gave a
+dripping shudder that shook some of the water off him and on my tulle. To
+the announcement of the loss of a bride he gave no heed at all, for at that
+moment, as Pan lifted the drenched bundle across his knees and patted it,
+a faint voice moaned out Matthew's name, and he flew to receive the revived
+Polly in his arms.
+
+"Now, hold her that way until I am sure I have established complete
+respiration," commanded Pan. "You women begin to take these wet rags off of
+her. Get two blankets." At which command the rest of the bridal party flew
+to work in different directions and I with them. Bess and I arrived in my
+room at the same moment, and she seized the two blankets I drew from the
+chest and departed without waiting for words. As I drew out the blankets,
+something else rolled to the floor, and I saw it was my Romney bundle,
+packed weeks before my death.
+
+Its suggestion was not to be denied. I stopped just where I was, and in two
+minutes my strong hands ripped that tulle and lace and chiffon from my back
+without waiting to undo hooks and eyes. In another three minutes I was into
+a pair of the tan cotton stockings and the flat shoes, which Pan had made
+me that rainy day in the barn, had on my corduroys and a linen smock, and
+was running down to my wedding with wings of the wind.
+
+When I reached the back porch I found Polly sitting up on the floor, with
+Matthew's arms around her, and the entire wedding-party standing beside the
+back steps, looking on and ejaculating with thankfulness. Old Parson
+Henderson stood near, beaming down benedictions for the rescue, and I
+decided that they were all in a daze in which anything could be put over on
+them.
+
+"Here's my bundle and me," I whispered to Pan, as he stood regarding the
+young recovered squaw proudly. "Hand the license to Parson Hendricks. I'll
+make him go on and marry us and get away before anybody puts me back into
+tulle."
+
+"As Polly is all right now we'll have the wedding, for it's getting late,
+and we want to get across to the Paradise Ridge to camp," said Adam, with
+the fluty command in his voice which always gets attention and obedience.
+As he spoke he put down his bundle, gave Parson Hendricks the document, and
+drew me beside him. I kept my bundle in my hand and stood with my other in
+his.
+
+"Why, I didn't know that--" the old parson began to splutter while a murmur
+of surprise and question began to arise among the hitherto hypnotized
+wedding-guests. Judge Rutherford stood apart with the twin parents showing
+them some book treasure he had unearthed for father, and I don't think that
+either one of my natural guardians was at my wedding except in body.
+
+At the critical moment dear old Matt did rise to the occasion, as did Polly
+also, with a crimson glow coming into her drenched cheeks, pallid only a
+second before, and a light like sunrise on a violet bank coming into her
+eyes.
+
+"She's always intended to marry Baldwin. I knew all about it. Go on!"
+Matthew commanded, as he supported Polly in her blankets on wobbly bare
+feet.
+
+During the resuscitation of Polly, Owen Murray, true to his new passion for
+the Leghorn family, had been reviving Mr. G. Bird and now with regard for
+decorum, he set him quietly upon his feet. Did the Golden Bird run like a
+coward from the scene of the catastrophe of his making? He did not. He
+deliberately stretched his wings, gave a mighty crow, and walked over and
+began to peck in my smock-pockets at corn that had lain there many long
+weeks for him.
+
+"Go on, Parson," commanded Pan again, impatiently, and then standing
+together in the fading sunlight, Pan, Mr. G. Bird, and I were married.
+
+Did Pan allow me to stay and make satisfactory explanations of my conduct
+to my friends and enjoy the wedding festivities so carefully copied out of
+the "Review" by Polly and Matthew? He did not. Immediately after the
+ceremony he picked up his two bundles and turned to all of our assembled
+friends.
+
+"We'll be back in a few weeks, and then I'll show you what I learned in
+Argentina. We have to hurry now to get across the valley. Some of the fine
+sheep over at Plunkett's are down with foot rash, and I want to be there by
+noon. Luck to you all." With these words Pan led me around the corner of
+the house, through the old garden, and out into the woods, Mr. G. Bird
+still following at the smock-pocket.
+
+"We'll have to go back and lock him up; he'll follow me," I said, as I
+paused and took the Golden Bird's proud head in my hand and let him peck at
+a dull gold circle on my third finger, which, I am sure, Pan himself had
+hammered out of a nugget for me.
+
+"No, let's take him. I want to show him over at Plunkett's and then in
+Providence and Hillsboro, to grade up their poultry. I doubt if there's his
+equal in America," answered Pan as he went on ahead of me to break the
+undergrowth into which he was leading me underneath the huge old trees.
+
+"I didn't write you to let that fool Belgian prune the whole place like
+that," Pan remarked as we paused at old Tilting Rock and looked down upon
+the orderly and repaired Elmnest in the sunset glow.
+
+"Write?" I murmured weakly, while my mind accused Uncle Cradd, and rightly
+too, as I learned later after a search in his pockets.
+
+"Wasn't any use sending any letter after that New Orleans one, because I
+traveled on the return trip all the way myself. Still you did pretty well
+to get the wedding and all ready at the hour I set, even if you did make
+that awful flummery mistake. I'll forgive you even that after I get over
+the shock of seeing you look that way."
+
+"The hour you set?" I again murmured a weak question.
+
+"I thought of writing you to get ready by nine o'clock in the morning, but
+I knew I'd have to stop in Hayesville for that bit of red tape, so I said
+five o'clock and had to hustle to make it. I knew you'd be ready. Now
+you'll have to travel, for we have five miles to go and it takes the pot
+two hours to simmer. Are you hungry?"
+
+I hadn't the strength to answer. I had just enough to pad along behind at
+his heels with Mr. G. Bird at mine. However, as I padded, I suddenly felt
+return that strength of ten women which I had put from me the morning I
+fled from the empty Elmnest, and I knew that it had come upon me to abide.
+
+I needed every bit of the energy of ten ordinary women to keep up with
+Pan's commands, as I helped him make camp beside a cool spring that bubbled
+out of a rock in a little cove that was swung high up on the side of
+Paradise Ridge. I washed the bundle of greens he had brought to the wedding
+and set them to simmer with the inevitable black walnut kernels in a pot
+that he produced from under a log in the edge of the woods, along with a
+couple of earthen bowls like the ones he kept secreted in the spring-house
+at Elmnest.
+
+"Got 'em all over ten States," he answered, as I questioned him with
+delight at the presence of our old friends. Then while I crouched and
+stirred, he took his long knife out, cut great armfuls of cedar boughs,
+threw them in a shadow at the foot of a tall old oak, and with a bundle of
+sticks swept upon them a great pile of dry leaves into the form of a huge
+nest. The golden glow was just fading as I lifted the pot and poured his
+portion in his bowl, then mine in the other, while he cut the black loaf he
+had taken from his bundle into hunks with his knife. It was after seven
+o'clock, and the crescent moon hung low by the ridge, waiting for the sun
+to take its complete departure before setting in for its night's joy-ride
+up the sky. It was eight before Pan finished his slow browsing in his bowl
+and came over to crouch with me out on the ledge of rock that overlooked
+the world below us. Clusters of lights in nests of gray smoke were dotted
+around over the valley, and I knew the nearest one was Riverfield; indeed I
+could see a bunch of lights a little way apart from the rest, and I felt
+sure that they were lighting the remaining revelers at my wedding-feast at
+Elmnest. The Golden Bird had gone sensibly to roost on one of the low
+limits of the old oak, and he reminded me of the white blur of Polly's
+wedding bell, which I had caught a glimpse of as I ran through the hall at
+Elmnest.
+
+"_I am thy child_," crooned Pan, with a new note to his chant that
+immediately started on my heartstrings. "And I'm tired," he added as he
+stretched himself on the rock beside me, laid his head on my breast, and
+nuzzled his lips into my bare throat.
+
+"I'm going to lift the crests and look at the tips of your ears, Pan," I
+said as I held him tight.
+
+"Better not," he mocked me.
+
+I did, and the tips were--I never intend to tell.
+
+The lights were twinkling out in the valley one by one, and the young moon
+made the purple blackness below us only faintly luminous when Pan drew me
+closer and then into the very edge of the world itself, and pointed down
+into the soft darkness.
+
+"We are all like that, we natives of this great land--asleep in the midst
+of a silvery mist, while the rest of the world is in the blaze of hell.
+We've got to wake up and take them to our breast, to nourish and warm and
+save them. There'll be just you and I and a few others to call the rest of
+our people until they hear and value and work," he said as he settled me
+against him so that the twain chants of our heartstrings became one.
+
+"I'll follow you through the woods and help you call, Adam," I said softly,
+with my lips under the red crest nearest to me.
+
+"And I'll bring you back here to nest and stay with you until your young
+are on their feet, with their eyes open," Pan crooned against my lips.
+"Dear God, what a force unit one woman and one man can create!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
+
+_By_ MARION POLK ANGELLOTTI
+
+
+This is not a story of laughter or tears, of shock or depression. It has no
+manufactured gloom. It preaches no reform. It has not a single social
+problem around which the characters move and argue and agonize. No reader
+need lie awake at night wondering what the author meant; all she intends to
+convey goes over the top with the first sight of the printed words. The
+story invites the reader to be thrilled, and dares him (or her) to weep.
+
+Briefly, "The Firefly of France" is in the manner of the romance--in the
+manner of Dumas, of Walter Scott. It is a story of love, mystery, danger,
+and daring. It opens in the gorgeous St. Ives Hotel in New York and ends
+behind the Allied lines in France. The story gets on its way on the first
+page, and the interest is continuous and increasing until the last page.
+And it is all beautifully done.
+
+The Philadelphia Record says: "No more absorbing romance of the war has
+been written than 'The Firefly of France.' In a sprightly, spontaneous way
+the author tells a story that is pregnant with the heroic spirit of the
+day. There is a blending of mystery, adventure, love and high endeavor that
+will charm every reader."
+
+_12mo, 363 pages_
+_Illustrated by Grant T. Reynard_
+_Price $1.40_
+
+At All Bookstores
+Published by
+
+THE NEW CENTURY CO.
+
+353 Fourth Avenue
+New York City
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FILM FOLK
+
+"Close-ups" of the Men, Women and Children who make the "Movies."
+
+_By_ ROB WAGNER
+
+
+A book of humor and entertaining facts. It is a sort of Los Angeles
+Canterbury Tales wherein appears the stories, told in the first person, of
+the handsome film actor whose beauty is fatal to his comfort; of the child
+wonder; the studio mother; the camera man, who "shoots the films"; the
+scenario writer; the "extra" man and woman, whose numbers are as the sands
+of the sea; the publicity man, who "rings the bells," etc., etc.
+
+All the stories are located in or near Los Angeles, a section more densely
+populated with makers of "movies" than any other section on earth. The
+author lives there, he has been in sympathetic contact with these votaries
+of this new art since its beginning, and his statements are entirely
+trustworthy.
+
+"Film Folk" is not a series of actual biographies of individuals; the
+author in each case presents an actor, a director or one of the other
+characters for the sake of concreteness and to carry out the story-form,
+and he contrives to set forth in the course of the book the entire
+movie-making world. The reader gets a clear idea of how the films are made
+and he is immensely entertained with the accounts of the manners and
+customs of the inhabitants of the vast movie villages--manners and customs
+unique in many respects.
+
+The stories are told in a style as easy to read as the author is
+good-humored.
+
+_8vo, 356 pages_
+_Illustrated from photographs_
+_Price $2.00_
+
+At All Bookstores
+Published by
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+End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Bird, by Maria Thompson Daviess
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Bird, by Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Bird
+
+Author: Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+Illustrator: Edward L. Chase
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2005 [EBook #16963]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN BIRD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE GOLDEN BIRD</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS</h2>
+
+<h3>Author of "The Melting of Molly," "Phyllis," "Sue Jane," "The Tinder Box,"
+etc.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD L. CHASE</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 75px;">
+<img src="images/title.jpg" width="75" height="72" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h4>NEW YORK</h4>
+<h4>THE CENTURY CO.</h4>
+<h4>1918</h4>
+
+
+<p>
+Copyright, 1918, by<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Century Co.</span><br />
+<br />
+Copyright, 1918, by<br />
+<span class="smcap">Butterick Publishing Company</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>Published, September, 1918</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Transcriber's note: Minor typos corrected and table of contents created.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="picture_1" id="picture_1"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 456px;">
+<img src="images/illustr-01.jpg" width="456" height="500" alt="&quot;Oh, how beautiful!&quot; exclaimed Polly, all restraint leaving
+her young face and body as she fell on her knees before the sultan" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Oh, how beautiful!&quot; exclaimed Polly, all restraint leaving
+her young face and body as she fell on her knees before the sultan</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h3>TO</h3>
+<h3>IDA CLYDE CLARKE</h3>
+<h3>WHOSE COURAGE INSPIRES ME</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Polly, all restraint leaving her young face</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>and body as she fell on her knees before the sultan</td><td align='left'><i><a href="#picture_1"><b>Frontispiece</b></a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>FACING PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while Adam stood over</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>her with something in his arms</td><td align='right'><a href="#Picture_2"><b>106</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins came and</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>welcomed him</td><td align='right'><a href="#picture_3"><b>118</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>And Bud was beautiful in the "custom-made" fifteen-dollar gray cheviot with</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>his violet eyes and yellow shock, in spite of his red ears</td><td align='right'><a href="#picture_4"><b>192</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_GOLDEN_BIRD" id="THE_GOLDEN_BIRD"></a>THE GOLDEN BIRD</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+
+<p>The primary need of a woman's nature is always supposed to be love, but
+very suddenly I discovered that in my case it was money, a lot of it and
+quick. That is, I thought I needed a lot and in a very great hurry; but if
+I had known what I know now, I might have been contented feeding upon the
+bread of some kind of charity, for instance, like being married to Matthew
+Berry the very next day after I discovered my poverty. But at that period
+of my life I was a very ignorant girl, and in the most noble spirit of a
+desperate adventure I embarked upon the quest of the Golden Bird, which in
+one short year has landed me&mdash;I am now the richest woman in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Ann Craddock, you know nothing at all about a chicken in any more
+natural state than in a croquette," stormed Matthew at me as he savagely
+speared one of those inoffensive articles of banquet diet with a sharp
+silver fork while he squared himself with equal determination between me
+and any possible partner for the delicious one-step that the band in the
+ball-room was beginning to send out in inviting waves of sound to round the
+dancers in from loitering over their midnight food.</p>
+
+<p>"The little I do <i>not</i> know about the chicken business, after one week
+spent in pursuit of that knowledge through every weird magazine and state
+agricultural bulletin in the public library, even you could learn, Matthew
+Berry, with your lack of sympathy with the great American wealth producer,
+the humble female chicken known in farmer patois as a hen. Did you know
+that it only costs about two dollars and thirteen cents to feed a hen a
+whole year and that she will produce twenty-seven dollars and a half for
+her owner, the darling thing? I know I'll just love her when I get to know
+her&mdash;them better, as I will in only about eighteen hours now."</p>
+
+<p>"Ann, you are mad&mdash;mad!" foamed Matthew, as he set down his plate of
+perfectly good and untasted food, and buried his head in his hands until
+his mop of black hair looked like a big blot of midnight.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not mad, Matthew, just dead poor, an heiress out of a job and with the
+necessity of earning her bread by the sweat of her brow instead of
+consuming cake by the labor of other people. Uncle Cradd is coming in again
+with a two-horse wagon, and the carriage to move us out to Elmnest
+to-morrow morning. Judge Rutherford will attend to selling all the property
+and settle with father's creditors. Another wagon is coming for father's
+library, and in two days he won't know that Uncle Cradd and I have moved
+him, if I can just get him started on a bat with Epictetus or old Horace.
+Then me for the tall timbers and my friend the hen.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ann, for the love of high heaven, marry me to-morrow, and let me move
+you and Father Craddock over into that infernal, empty old barn I keep open
+as a hotel for nigger servants. Marry me instead&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Instead of the hen?" I interrupted him with a laugh. "I can't, Matt, you
+dear thing. I honestly can't. I've got to go back to the land from which my
+race sprang and make it blossom into a beautiful existence for those two
+dear old boys. When Uncle Cradd heard of the smash from that horrible
+phosphate deal he was at the door the next morning at sun-up, driving the
+two gray mules to one wagon himself, with old Rufus driving the gray horses
+hitched to that queer tumble-down, old family coach, though he hadn't
+spoken to father since he married mother twenty-eight years ago.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ready to move you all home, bag and baggage, William,' he said, as he
+took father into his huge old arms clad in the rusty broadcloth of his best
+suit, which I think is the garment he purchased for father's very worldly,
+town wedding with my mother, which he came from Riverfield to attend for
+purposes of disinheriting the bridegroom and me, though I was several years
+in the future at that date. 'Elmnest is as much yours as mine, as I told
+you when you sprigged off to marry in town. Get your dimity together,
+Nancy! Your grandmother Craddock's haircloth trunk is strapped on behind
+her carriage there, and Rufus will drive you home. These mules are too
+skittish for him to handle. Fine pair, eh, William?' And right there in the
+early dawn, almost in front of the garage that contained his touring
+Chauvinnais and my gray roadster, father stood in his velvet dressing-gown
+and admired the two moth-eaten old animals. Now, I honestly ask you,
+Matthew, could a woman of heart refuse at least to attempt to see those two
+great old boys through the rest of their lives in peace and comfort
+together? Elmnest is roof and land and that is about all, for Uncle Cradd
+never would let father give him a cent on account of his feud with mother,
+even after she had been dead for years. Father would have gone home with
+him that morning, but I made him stay to turn things over to Judge
+Rutherford. Aren't they great, those two old pioneers?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are the best sports ever, Ann, and I say let's fix up Elmnest for
+them to live in when they won't stay with us, and for a summer home for us
+to go and take&mdash;take the children for rural training. Now what do you
+say&mdash;wedding to-morrow?" And the light in dear old Matthew's eyes was very
+lovely indeed as the music grew less blatant and the waiter turned down the
+lights near the little alcove that the wide walnut paneling made beside the
+steps that go up to the balcony. I have always said that the Clovermead
+Country Club has the loveliest house anywhere in the South.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Matthew, I care too much about you to let you marry a woman in search
+of a roof and food," I answered him, with all of the affection I seemed to
+possess at that time in my eyes. "You deserve better than that from me."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, see here, Ann Craddock, did I or did I not ask you to marry me at
+your fourteenth birthday party, which was just ten years ago, and did you
+or did you not tell me just to wait until you got grown? Have you or have
+you not reached the years of discretion and decision? I am ready to marry,
+I am!" And as he made this announcement of his matrimonially inclined
+condition of mind, Matthew took my hand in his and laid his cheek against
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"My heart isn't grown up yet, Matt," I said softly, with all the tenderness
+I, as I before remarked, at that time possessed. "Don't wait for me. Marry
+Belle Proctor or somebody and&mdash;and bring the&mdash;babies out to Elmnest for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The explosion that then followed landed me in Owen Murray's arms on the
+floor of the ball-room, and landed Matthew in his big racing-car, which I
+could hear go roaring down the road beyond the golf-links.</p>
+
+<p>There is a certain kind of woman whose brain develops with amazing
+normality and strength, but whose heart remains very soft-fibered and
+uncertain, with tendencies to lapse into second childhood. I am that garden
+variety, and it took the exercising of many heart interests to toughen my
+cardiac organ.</p>
+
+<p>As I traveled out the long turnpike that wound itself through the Harpeth
+Valley to the very old and tradition-mossed town of Riverfield, in the
+high, huge-wheeled, swinging old coach of my Great-grandmother Craddock,
+sitting pensively alone while father occupied the front seat beside Uncle
+Cradd, both of them in deep converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle
+Cradd bumbled the air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old
+bass, I should have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the
+devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon his
+old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into exile; but
+I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon the faded rose
+leather of those ancestral cushions? That was not the case, for upon the
+seat beside me rode the Golden Bird in a beautiful crate, which bore the
+legend, "Cock, full brother to Ladye Rosecomb, the world's champion,
+three-hundred-and-fourteen-egg hen, insured at one thousand dollars.
+Express sixteen dollars." And in another larger crate, strapped on top of
+the old haircloth trunk, which held several corduroy skirts, some coarse
+linen smocks made hurriedly by Madam Felicia after a pattern in "The
+Review," and several pairs of lovely, high-topped boots, as well as a
+couple of Hagensack sweaters, rode his family, to whom he had not yet even
+spoken. The family consisted of ten perfectly beautiful white Leghorn
+feminine darlings whose crate was marked, "Thoroughbreds from Prairie Dog
+Farm, Boulder, Colorado." I had obtained the money to purchase these very
+much alive foundations for my fortune, also the smart farmer's costume, or
+rather my idea of the correct thing in rustics, by selling all the lovely
+lingerie I had brought from Paris with me just the week before the terrible
+war had crashed down upon the world, and which I had not worn because I had
+not needed them, to Bess Rutherford and Belle Proctor at very high prices,
+because who could tell whether France would ever procure their like again?
+They were composed mostly of incrustations of embroidery and real Val, and
+anyway the Golden Bird only cost seven hundred dollars instead of the
+thousand, and the ladies Bird only ten dollars apiece, which to me did not
+seem exactly fair, as they were of just as good family as he. I was very
+proud of myself for having been professional enough to follow the
+directions of my new big red book on "The Industrious Fowl," and to buy
+Golden Bird and his family from localities which were separated as far as
+is the East from the West. My company was responsible for my
+light-heartedness at a time when I should have been weeping with vain
+regrets at leaving life&mdash;and perhaps love, for I couldn't help hearing in
+my mind's ears that great dangerous racer bearing Matthew away from me at
+the rate of eighty miles an hour. I was figuring on just how long it would
+take the five to eight hundred children of the Bird family, which I
+expected to incarnate themselves out of egg-shells, to increase to a flock
+of two thousand, from which, I was assured by the statistics in that very
+reliable book, I ought to make three thousand dollars a year, maybe five,
+with "good management." Also I was not at all worried about the "good
+management" to be employed. I intended to begin to exert it the minute of
+my arrival in the township of Riverfield. I had even already begun to use
+"thoughtful care," for I had brought a box of tea biscuits along, and I
+felt a positive thrill of affection for Mr. G. Bird as he gratefully
+gobbled a crushed one from my hand. Also it was dear of him the way he
+raised his proud head and chuckled to his brides in the crate behind him
+to come and get their share. It was pathetic the way he called and called
+and they answered, until I finally stopped their mouths with ten other
+dainties, so that he could consume his in peace. Even at that early stage
+of our friendship I liked the Golden Bird, and perhaps it was just a wave
+of prophetic psychology that made me feel so warmly towards the proud,
+white young animal who was to lead me to&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>So instead of the despair due the occasion, I was happy as I jogged slowly
+out over the twenty long miles that stretched out like a silvery ribbon
+dropped down upon the meadows and fields that separate the proud city of
+Hayesville and the gray and green little old hamlet of Riverfield, which
+nestles in a bend of the Cumberland River and sleeps time away under its
+huge old oak and elm and hackberry trees, kept perpetually green by the
+gnarled old cedars that throw blue-berried green fronds around their winter
+nakedness. As we rode slowly along, with a leisure I am sure all the
+motor-car world has forgotten exists, the two old boys on the front seat
+hummed and chuckled happily while I breathed in great gulps of a large,
+meadow-sweet spring tang that seemed to fairly soak into the circulation of
+my heart. The February day was cool with yet a kind of tender warmth in its
+little gust of Southern wind that made me feel as does that brand of very
+expensive Rhine wine which Albert at the Salemite on Forty-second Street in
+New York keeps for Gale Beacon specially, and which makes Gale so furious
+for you not to recognize, remember about, and comment upon at his really
+wonderful dinners to bright and shining lights in art and literature.
+Returning from New York to the Riverfield Road through the Harpeth Valley,
+I also discovered upon the damsel Spring a hint of a soft young costume of
+young green and purple and yellow that was as yet just a mist being draped
+over her by the Southern wind.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel like the fairy princess being driven into a land of enchantment,
+Mr. Golden Bird," I remarked as I leaned back upon the soft old cushions
+and took in the first leisurely breath of the air of the open road that my
+lungs had ever inhaled: one simply gulps air when seated in a motor-car.
+"It is all so simple and easy and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Just at this moment happened the first real adventure of my quest, and at
+that time it seemed a serious one, though now I would regard it as of very
+little moment. Suddenly there came the noise of snipping cords, the feeling
+of jar and upheaval, and before I could turn more than half-way around for
+purposes of observation, the entire feminine Bird family in their temporary
+crate abode slid down into the dust of the road with a great crash. I held
+my breath while, with a jolt and a bounce and a squeak of the heavy old
+springs, Uncle Cradd brought the ancestral family coach to a halt about ten
+feet away from the wreck, which was a m&ecirc;l&eacute;e of broken timber, squeaking
+voices, and flapping wings. As soon as I recovered from the shock I sprang
+from my cushions beside Mr. G. Bird, who was fairly yelling clucks of
+command at this family-to-be, and ran to their assistance. Now, I am very
+long and fleet of limb, but those white Leghorn ladies were too swift for
+me, and before I reached the wreck, they had all ten disentangled
+themselves from the crushed timbers and had literally taken to the woods,
+through which the Riverfield ribbon was at that moment winding itself.
+Clucking and chuckling, they concealed themselves in an undergrowth of
+coral-strung buck bushes, little scrub cedars, and dried oak leaves, and I
+could hear them holding a council of war that sounded as if they were to
+depart forever to parts unknown. In a twinkling of an eye I saw my future
+fortune literally take wings, and in my extremity I cried aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, call them all back, Mr. Golden Bird," I pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Nancy, that is always what I said about hens. They are such pesky
+womanish things that it's beneath the dignity of a man to bother with 'em.
+I haven't had one on the place for twenty years. We'll just turn this
+rooster loose with them and we can go on home in peace," said Uncle Cradd
+as he peered around the side of the coach while father's mild face appeared
+on the other side. As he spoke, he reached back and released my Golden Bird
+from his crate and sent him flying out into the woods in the direction of
+his family.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they are the only things in the world that stand between me and
+starvation," I wailed, though not loud enough for either father or Uncle
+Cradd to hear. "Please, please, Golden Bird, come back and bring the others
+with you," I pleaded as I held out my hand to the proud white Sultan, who
+had paused by the roadside on his way to his family and was now turning
+bright eyes in the direction of my outstretched hand. In all the troubles
+and trials through which that proud Mr. G. Bird and I went hand in hand, or
+rather wing in hand, in which I was at times hard and cold and
+disappointed in him, I have never forgotten that he turned in his tracks
+and walked majestically back to my side and peered into the outstretched
+hand with a trustful and inquiring peck. Some kind fortune had brought it
+to pass that I held the package of tea biscuits in my other hand, and in a
+few breathless seconds he was pecking at one and calling to the foolish,
+faithless lot of huddled hens in the bushes to come to him immediately.
+First he called invitingly while I held my breath, and then he commanded as
+he scratched for lost crumbs in the white dust of the Riverfield ribbon,
+but the foolish creatures only huddled and squeaked, and at a few cautious
+steps I took in their direction, they showed a decided threat of vanishing
+forever into the woods.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what will I do, Mr. G. Bird?" I asked in despair, with a real sob in
+my throat as I looked toward the family coach, from which I could hear a
+happy and animated discussion of Plato's Republic going on between the two
+old gentlemen who had thirty years' arrears in argument and conversation to
+make up. I could see that no help would come from that direction. "I can't
+lose them forever," I said again, and this time there was the real sob
+arising unmistakably in my voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Just stand still, and I'll call them to you," came a soft, deep voice out
+of the forest behind me, and behold, a man stood at my side!</p>
+
+<p>The man's name is Adam.</p>
+
+<p>"Now give me a cracker and watch 'em come," he said, as he came close to my
+side and took a biscuit from my surprised and nerveless hand. "Ah, but you
+are one beauty, aren't you?" he further remarked, and I was not positively
+sure whether he meant me or the Golden Bird until I saw that he had reached
+down and was stroking Mr. G. Bird with a delighted hand. "Chick, chick,
+chick!" he commanded, with a note that was not at all unlike the commanding
+one the Sultan had used a few minutes past, only more so, and in less than
+two seconds all those foolish hens were scrambling around our feet. In
+fact, the command in his voice had been so forcible that I myself had moved
+several feet nearer to him until I, too, was in the center of my
+scrambling, clucking Bird venture.</p>
+
+<p>I don't like beautiful men. I never did. I think that a woman ought to have
+all the beauty there is, and I feel that a man who has any is in some way
+dishonest, but I never before saw anything like that person who had come
+out of the woods to the rescue of my family fortune, and I simply stared at
+him as he stood with a fluff of seething white wings around his feet and
+towered against the green gray of an old tree that hung over the side of
+the road. He was tall and broad, but lithe and lovely like some kind of a
+woods thing, and heavy hair of the same brilliant burnished red that I had
+seen upon the back of a prize Rhode Island Red in the lovely water-color
+plates in my chicken book,&mdash;which had tempted me to buy "red" until I had
+read about the triumphs of the Leghorn "whites,"&mdash;waved close to his head,
+only ruffling just over his ears enough to hide the tips of them. His eyes
+were set so far back under their dark, heavy, red eyebrows that they seemed
+night-blue with their long black fringe of lashes. His face was square and
+strong and gentle, and the collar of his gray flannel shirt was open so
+that I could see that his head was set on his wide shoulders with lines
+like an old Greek masterpiece. Gray corduroy trousers were strapped around
+his waist by a wide belt made of some kind of raw-looking leather that was
+held together by two leather lacings, while on his feet were a kind of
+sandal shoes that appeared to be made of the same leather. He must have
+constructed both belt and shoes himself, and he hadn't any hat at all upon
+his crimson-gold thatch of hair. I looked at him so long that I had to look
+away, and then when I did I looked right back at him because I couldn't
+believe that he was true.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm going to pick them up gently, two at a time, tie their feet
+together with a piece of this string, and hand them to you to put inside
+the carriage. I'll catch the cock first, the handsome old sport," and as
+Pan spoke, he began to suit his actions to his words with amazing tact and
+skill. I shall always be glad that the first chicken I ever held in my arms
+was put into them gently by that woods man, and that it was the Golden Bird
+himself. "Put him in and shut the door, and he'll calm the ladies as you
+bring them to him," he commanded as he bent down and lifted two of the Bird
+brides and began to tie their feet together with a piece of cord he had
+taken from a deep pocket in the gray trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you," I said with a depth of gratitude in my voice that I did
+not know I possessed. "You are the most wonderful man I ever saw&mdash;I mean
+that I ever saw with chickens," I said, ending the remark in an agony of
+embarrassment. "I don't know much about them. I mean chickens," I hastened
+to add, and made matters worse.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they are easy, when you get to know 'em, chickens&mdash;or men," he said
+kindly, without a spark in his eyes back of their black bushes. "Are they
+yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are all the property I have got in the world," I answered as I
+clasped the last pair of biddies to my breast, for while we had been
+holding our primitive conversation, I had been obeying his directions and
+loading the Birds into Grandmother Craddock's stately equipage. Anxiety
+shone from my eyes into his sympathetic ones.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'll be an heiress in no time with them to start you, with 'good
+management.' I never saw a finer lot," he said, as he walked to the door of
+the carriage with me, with the last pair of white Leghorn ladies in his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"But maybe I haven't got that management," I faltered, with my anxiety
+getting tearful in my words.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you'll learn," he said, with such heavenly soothing in his voice that
+I almost reached out my hands and clung to him as he settled the fussing
+poultry in the bottom of the carriage in such a way as to leave room for my
+feet among them. Mr. G. Bird was perched on the seat at my side and was
+craning his neck down and soothingly scolding his family. "How are you, Mr.
+Craddock?" Pan asked of Uncle Cradd's back, and by his question interrupted
+an argument that sounded, from the Greek phrases flying, like a battle on
+the walls of Troy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, how are you, Adam?" exclaimed Uncle Cradd, as he turned around
+and greeted the woodsman with a smile of positive delight.</p>
+
+<p>I had known that man's name was Adam, but I don't know how I knew.</p>
+
+<p>"This is my brother, Mr. William Craddock, who's come home to me to live
+and die where he belongs, and that young lady is Nancy. Those chickens are
+just a whim of hers, and we have to humor her. Can we lift you as far as
+Riverfield?" Uncle Cradd made his introduction and delivered his invitation
+all in one breath.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to meet you, sir, and I am grateful for your assistance in
+capturing my daughter's whims," said father, as he came partly out of his
+B.C. daze.</p>
+
+<p>As he took my hand into his slender, but very powerful grasp, that man had
+the impertinence to laugh into my eyes at my parent's double-entendre,
+which he had intended as a simple single remark.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you, sir; I've got to get across Paradise Ridge before sundown.
+The lambs are dropping fast over at Plunkett's, and I want to make sure
+those Southdown ewes are all right," he answered as he put my hand out of
+his, though I almost let it rebel and cling, and took for a second the
+Golden Bird's proud head into his palm.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be over at Elmnest before your&mdash;your 'good judgment' needs mine," he
+said to me as softly as I think a mother must speak to a child as she
+unloosens clinging dependent fingers. As he spoke he shut the door of the
+old ark, and Uncle Cradd drove on, leaving him standing on the edge of the
+great woods looking after us.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish that man were going home with us, Mr. G. Bird, or we were going
+home with him," I said with a kind of terror of the unknown creeping over
+me. As I spoke I reached out and cuddled the Golden darling into the hollow
+of my arm. Some day I am going to travel to the East shore of Baltimore to
+the Rosecomb Poultry Farm to see the woman who raised the Golden Bird and
+cultivated such a beautiful confiding, and affectionate nature in him. He
+soothed me with a chuckle as he pecked playfully at my fingers and then
+called cheerfully down to the tethered white Ladies of Leghorn.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<p>As we ambled towards the sun, which was setting over old Harpeth, the
+tallest humpbacked hill on Paradise Ridge, the Greek battle raged on the
+front seat and there was peace with anxiety in the back of the ancestral
+coach.</p>
+
+<p>As the wheels and the two old gentlemen rumbled and the Bird's family
+clucked and crooned, with only an occasional irritated squawk, I, for the
+first time since the landslide of our fortune, began to take real thought
+of the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, landslide is a good name for what is happening to us, and I hope
+we'll slide or land on the home base, whatever is the correct term in the
+national game that Matthew has given up trying to teach me to enjoy," I
+said to myself as I settled down to look into our situation.</p>
+
+<p>I found that it was not at all astonishing that father had lost all the
+fortune that my mother had left him and me when she died three years ago.
+It was astonishing that the old dreamer had kept it as long as he had, and
+it was only because most of it had been in land and he had from the first
+lived serenely and comfortably on nice flat slices of town property cut off
+whenever he needed it. He had been a dreamer when he came out of the
+University of Virginia ten years after the war, and it had been the tragedy
+of Uncle Cradd's life that he had not settled down with him on the very
+broad, but very poor, ancestral acres of Elmnest, to slice away with him at
+that wealth instead of letting himself be captured in all his poetic beauty
+at a dance in Hayesville by a girl whose father had made her half a million
+dollars in town land deals. Uncle Cradd's resentment had been bitter, and
+as he was the senior of his twin brother by several hours, he demanded that
+father sell him his half of Elmnest, and for it had paid his entire fortune
+outside of the bare acres. In poetic pride father had acceded to his
+demand, lent the money thrust upon him to the first speculator who got to
+him, and the two brothers had settled themselves down twenty miles apart in
+the depths of a feud, to eat their hearts out for each other. The rich man
+sought a path to the heart of the poor man, but was repulsed until the day
+after the spectacular failure of his phosphate company had penetrated into
+the wilds of little Riverfield, and immediately Uncle Cradd had hitched up
+the moth-eaten string in his old stables and come into town for us, and in
+father's sweet old heart there was never an idea of not, as he put it,
+"going home." I had never seen Elmnest, but I knew something of the
+situation, and that is where the Golden Bird arrived on the situation. The
+morning after our decision to return to the land&mdash;a decision in which I had
+borne no part but a sympathetic one after I had listened half the night to
+father's raptures over Uncle Cradd as a Greek scholar with whom one would
+wish to spend one's last days&mdash;the February copy of "The Woman's Review"
+arrived, and on the first page was an article from a woman who earns five
+thousand dollars a year with the industrious hen on a little farm of ten
+acres. There were lovely pictures of her with her feathered family, and I
+decided that what a woman with the limited experience of a head
+stenographer in a railroad office could do, I, with my wider scope of
+travel and culture, could more than double on three hundred acres of land
+in the Harpeth Valley. Some day I'm going to see that woman and I'm going
+to stop by and speak sternly to the editor of "The Woman's Review" on my
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. G. Bird," I began as I reached this point and I saw that we were
+arriving in the heart of civilization, which was the square of a quaint
+little old town. From a motor-car acquaintance, I knew this to be
+Riverfield, but I had never even stopped because of the family pride
+involved in the feud now dead. "Mr. Bird," I repeated, "I am afraid I am
+up against it, and I hope you'll stand by me." He answered me by preening a
+breast feather and winking one of his bright eyes as Uncle Cradd stopped
+the ancient steeds in the center of the square, before a little old brick
+building that bore three signs over its tumble-down porch. They were:
+"Silas Beesley, Grocer," "U.S. Post-Office," and "Riverfield Bank and Trust
+Co."</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, Si, here's William come home!" called Uncle Cradd, as a negro boy
+with a broad grin stood at the heads of the slow old horses, who, I felt
+sure, wouldn't have moved except under necessity before the judgment day.
+In less time than I can take to tell it father descended literally into the
+arms of his friends. About half a dozen old farmers, some in overalls and
+some in rusty black broadcloth the color of Uncle Cradd's, poured out of
+the wide door of the business building before described, and they acted
+very much as I have seen the boys at Yale or Princeton act after a success
+or defeat on the foot-ball field. They hugged father and they slapped him
+on the back and they shook his hand as if it were not of human,
+sixty-year-old flesh and blood. Then they introduced a lot of stalwart
+young farmers to him, each of whom gave father hearty greetings, but
+refrained from even a glance in my direction as I sat enthroned on high on
+the faded old cushions and waited for an introduction, which at last Uncle
+Cradd remembered to give me.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Miss Nancy Craddock, gentlemen, named after my mother, and she's
+going to beat out the Bend in her chicken raising, which she's brought
+along with her. Come over, youngsters, and look her over. The fire in the
+parlor don't burn more than a half cord of wood on a Sunday, and you can
+come over Saturday afternoon and cut it against the Sabbath, with a welcome
+to any one of the spare rooms and a slab of Rufus's spare rib and a couple
+of both breakfast and supper muffins." All of the older men laughed at this
+sweeping invitation, and all the younger greeted it with ears that became
+instantly crimson. I verily believe they would one and all have fled and
+left me sitting there yet if a diversion had not arrived in the person of
+Mrs. Silas, who came bustling out of the door of the grocery or post-office
+or bank; whichever it is called, is according to your errand there. Mrs. Si
+was tall, and almost as broad as the door itself, with the rosiest cheeks
+and the bluest eyes I had ever beheld, and they crinkled with loveliness
+around their corners. She had white water-waves that escaped their decorous
+plastering into waving little tendril curls, and her mouth was as curled
+and red-lipped and dimpled as a girl's. In a twinkling of those blue eyes I
+fell out of the carriage into a pair of strong, soft, tender arms covered
+with stiff gray percale, and received two hearty kisses, one on each cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, honeybunch, and I'm glad William has brought you home at
+last, the rascal." As she hugged me she reached out a strong hand and gave
+father first a good shake by his shoulder and then by his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine girl, eh, Mary?" answered father as he returned the shoulder shake
+with a pat on the broad gray percale back, and retained the strong hand in
+his, with a frank clinging.</p>
+
+<p>I wondered if&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"She's her Aunt Mary's blessed child, and I will have her making riz
+biscuits like old Madam Craddock's black Sue for you two boys in less than
+a week," she answered him, with a laugh that somehow sounded a bit dewy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you know about chickens, Mrs.&mdash;I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked as I
+clung to the hand to which father was not clinging.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless my heart, what's that I see setting up on old Madam Craddock's
+cushions? Is it a rooster or a dream bird?" she answered me by exclaiming
+as she caught sight of Mr. G. Bird sitting in lonely state, but as good as
+gold, upon the rose-leather cushions. "I thought I feathered out the finest
+chickens in the Harpeth Valley, but this one isn't human, you might say,"
+and as she spoke she shook off father and me, and approached the carriage
+and peered in with the reverence of a real poultry artist. "Bless my
+heart!" she again exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Those are just Miss Nancy's whims to take the place of her card-routs and
+sinful dancing habits," said Uncle Cradd, with a great and indulgent
+amusement as all the little crowd of native friends gathered around to look
+at the Bird family.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, that rooster ought to have been met with a brass band like they did
+Mr. Cummins' horse, Lightheels, after he won all those cups up in the races
+at Cincinnati," said the tallest of the young farmers, whose ears had begun
+to assume their normal color.</p>
+
+<p>"And a sight more right he has to such a honor, Bud Beesley," replied Aunt
+Mary, with spirit, as she stroked the proud head of the Golden Bird. "It
+takes hens and women all their days to collect the money men spend on
+race-horses sometimes, my son."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mary, I reckon you aren't alluding to this pair of spanking grays
+I've got; but in case you are getting personal to them, I think we had
+better begin to go. Come, get in with the Whim family, Nancy, and let's be
+traveling. It's near on to a mile over a mighty rough road to the house
+from the gate here. Everybody come and see us." As he spoke Uncle Cradd
+assisted me with ceremony into the chariot beside the Golden hero of the
+hour, and started the ancient steeds into a tall old gate right opposite
+the bank-store-post-office. As he drove away something like warm tears
+misted across my eyes as I looked back and saw all the goodwill and
+friendliness in the eye of the farmer friends who watched our departure.</p>
+
+<p>"That, Ann, is the salt of the earth, and I don't see how I consumed life
+so long without it," said father as he turned, and looked at me with a
+sparkle in his mystic gray eyes that I had never seen there when we were
+seated at table with the mighty or making our bow in broadcloth and fine
+linen in some of the palaces of the world. I didn't know what it was then,
+but I do now; it is a land-love that lies deep in the heart of every man
+who is born out in meadows and fields. They never get over it and sometimes
+transmit it even to the second generation. I felt it stir and run in my
+blood as we rumbled and bumped up the long avenue of tall old elm-trees
+that led through deep fields which were even then greening with blue-grass
+and from which arose a rich loamy fragrance, and finally arrived at the
+most wonderful old brick house that I had ever seen in all of my life; it
+seemed to even my much traveled eyes in some ways the most wonderful abode
+for human beings I had ever beheld. It was not the traditional
+white-pillared mansion. It was more wonderful. The bricks had aged a rich,
+red purple, and were rimmed and splotched with soft green and gray moss
+under traceries of vines that were beginning to put out rich russet buds.
+The windows were filled with tiny diamond panes of glass, which glittered
+in the gables from the last rays of the sun setting over Old Harpeth, and
+the broad, gray shingled roof hovered down over the wide porch which would
+have sheltered fifty people safely. A flagstone walk and stone steps led up
+from the drive, seemingly right into the wide front door, which had small,
+diamond-paned, heavily shuttered windows in it, and queer holes on each
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"To shoot through in case of marauding Indians," answered Uncle Cradd to my
+startled question, which had sprung from a suspicion that must have been
+dictated by prenatal knowledge. As I entered the homestead of my fathers I
+felt that I had slipped back into the colonial age of America, and I found
+myself almost in a state of terror. The wide old hall, the heavy-beamed
+ceiling of which was so low that you felt again hovered, was lighted by
+only one candle, though a broad path of firelight lay across the dark
+polished floor from the room on the left, where appeared old Rufus
+enveloped in a large apron no whiter than the snowy kinks on his old head.</p>
+
+<p>"Time you has worship, Mas' Cradd, my muffins and spare ribs will be done,"
+he said after he had bestowed a grand bow first upon father and then upon
+me, with a soft-voiced greeting of "sarvant, little Mis', and sarvant, Mas'
+William."</p>
+
+<p>"It is fitting that we render unto the Lord thankfulness for your return
+home with Nancy, your child, William, in the first moments of your arrival.
+Come!" commanded Uncle Cradd, and he led us into a huge room as low
+ceilinged and dark-toned as the hall. In it there was only the firelight
+and another dim candle placed on a small table beside a huge old book. With
+the surety of long habit father walked straight to a large chair that was
+drawn close to the hearth on the side opposite the table, behind which was
+another large chair of exactly the same pattern of high-backed dignity, and
+seated himself. Then he drew me down into a low chair beside him, and I
+lifted up my hands, removed my hat, and was at last come home from a huge
+and unreal world outside.</p>
+
+<p>As I sat and gazed from the dark room through a large old window, which was
+swung open on heavy hinges to allow the sap-scented breeze to drift in and
+fan the fire of lingering winter, out into an old garden with
+brick-outlined walks and climbing bare rose vines upon which was beginning
+to be poured the silver enchantment of a young moon, Uncle Cradd, in his
+deep old voice, which was like the notes given out by an ancient violin,
+began to read a chapter from his old Book which began with the exhortation,
+"Let brotherly love continue," and laid down a course of moral conduct that
+seemed so impossible that I sat spellbound to the last words, "Grace be
+with you all. Ahmen."</p>
+
+<p>Then I knelt beside father, with old Rufus close behind our chairs, and was
+for the first time in my life lifted on the wings of prayer and carried off
+up somewhere I hadn't been before. As Uncle Cradd's sonorous words of love
+and rejoicing over our return rolled forth in the twilight, I crouched
+against father's shoulder, and I think the spirit of my Grandmother
+Craddock, whom I had heard indulging in a Methodist form of vocal rejoicing
+which is called a shout, was about to manifest itself through me when I was
+brought to earth and to my feet by a long, protracted, and alarmed appeal
+sent forth in the voice of the Golden Bird.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep us and protect us through the night with Your grace. Ahmen! Why
+didn't you put those chickens out of the way of skunks and weasels, Rufus,
+you old scoundrel," rolled out Uncle Cradd's deep voice, dropping with
+great harmony from the sublime to the domestic.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with Rufus at my heels, I literally flew through the back door of the
+house towards the sound of distress that had come from that direction. In
+front of a rambling old barn, which was silvered by the crescent that hung
+over its ridge-pole, stood the chariot, and at its door, with Mr. G. Bird
+in his arms, I saw that man Adam.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't recognize my first touch," came across the moonbeams in a voice
+as fluty as the original Pan's, and mingled with friendly chuckles and
+clucks from the entire Bird family as they felt the caress of long hands
+among them. I was so ruffled myself that I felt in need of soothing; so I
+came across the light and into the black shadow of the old coach.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>After my ardent exclamation of welcome to Pan I stood still for fear he
+would vanish into the moonlight, because with his litheness and the eerie
+locks of hair that even in the silvering radiance showed a note of crimson
+cresting over his ears, he looked exactly as if he had come out of the
+hollow in some oak-tree.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might feel that way about it," he answered me, or rather I
+think that is what he said, because he was crooning to me and the Ladies
+Bird at the same time, and with a mixture of epitaphs and endearments that
+I didn't care to untangle. "There, there, lovely lady, don't be scared; it
+is going to be all right," he soothed, as he lifted one of the fluffy
+biddies and tucked her under his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am so glad you think so," I claimed the remark by exclaiming, while
+she made her claim by a contented little cluck.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't be bothered, sweetheart," he again said, as he picked up another
+of the Ladies Bird and turned towards the huge old tumble-down barn that
+was yawning a black midnight out into the gray moonlight. "Let's all go
+into the barn and settle down to live happily together ever after."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that will be lovely," I answered, while beautiful Mrs. Bird made
+her reply with a consenting cluck. I never supposed I would make an
+affirmative answer to a domestic proposal that was at least uncertain of
+intent, but then I also never dreamed of being in the position of guardian
+to eleven head of prize live stock, and I think anything I did or said
+under the circumstances was excusable.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to come with me and bring the cock with you. Old Rufus
+wouldn't touch one of them for a gold rock," he asked, and I felt slightly
+aggrieved when I discovered that I was to know when I was being addressed
+by a lack of any term of endearment, though the caressing flutiness of
+Adam's voice was the same to me as to any one of the Ladies Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw, Marster, chickens am my hoodoo. To tetch one makes my flesh crawl
+like they was walking on my grave, and if little Mis' will permit of me, I
+wanter git back to see to the browning of my muffins ginst the time Mas'
+Cradd rars at me fer his supper," and without waiting for the consent he
+had asked, old Rufus shuffled hurriedly back into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bring Mr. Golden Bird. I adore the creeps his feathers give me," I
+said as I reached in the coach and took the Sultan in my arms. He gave not
+a single note of remonstrance, but I suppose it was imagination that made
+me think that he fluffed himself into my embrace with friendly joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, let's put them for to-night over in the feed-room. There, ladies,
+did you ever see a greater old barn than this?" As he spoke to us he led
+the way with four of the admiring and obedient Ladies, in his arms, while
+the fifth, who was I, followed him into the deep, purple, hay-scented
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"I never did see anything like it," I answered, while only one of the
+Leghorn ladies gave a sleepy cluck of assent to their part of the question.</p>
+
+<p>I really did have a thrill of pure joy in that old barn. It wasn't like
+anything I had ever seen before, and was as far removed from a garage as is
+a brown-hearted chestnut burr from a souffl&eacute; of maroons served on a silver
+dish. I could hear the moth-eaten string of steeds munching noisily over at
+one end of the huge darkness, and the odor that arose from their repast was
+of corn and not of suffocating gasoline. Tall weeds and long frames with
+teeth in them, which gave them the appearance of huge alligator mouths
+yawning from the dusk to snap me, pressed close on each side. Straps and
+ropes and harness were draped from the beams and along the walls, and the
+combined aroma of corn and hay and leather and horses seemed an inspiration
+to a lusty breath.</p>
+
+<p>"There, sweeties, is a nice smooth bin for you to go to bed on," said Adam
+as he set the Ladies Leghorn one by one from his arms on the edge of a long
+narrow box that was piled high with corn. "Now you stay here with them
+until I bring the rest. Put your Golden Bird down beside the biddies, and
+I'll bring the others to put on the other side of him to roost, and in the
+morning he can begin scratching for a happy and united family." With which
+command Pan disappeared into the purple darkness and left me alone in the
+snapping monster shadows with only the sleepy Golden Bird for company. The
+Bird shook himself after being deposited beside the half-portion of his
+family, puffed himself up, sank his long neck into his shoulders, and
+evidently went to sleep. I shivered up close to him and looked over my
+shoulder into the blackness behind the teeth and then didn't look again
+until I heard the soft pad of the weird leather shoes behind me.</p>
+
+<p>"Now all's shipshape for the night," said Pan as he spread out his armful
+of feathers into a bunchy line on the edge of the bin. "Just throw them
+about two double handfulls of mixed corn and wheat down in the hay litter
+on the floor at daybreak and keep them shut up and scratching until you are
+sure none of them are going to lay. From the red of their combs I judge
+they will all be laying in a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"At daybreak?" I faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; they ought to be got to work as soon as they hop off the roost,"
+answered Pan, as he spread a little more of the hay on the floor in front
+of the perch of the Bird family.</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know it&mdash;I mean daybreak?" I asked, with eagerness and
+hesitation both in my voice, as Pan started padding out through the
+monster-haunted darkness towards the square of silver light beyond the huge
+door. As I asked my question I followed close at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be going through to Plunketts and I'll call you, like this." As we
+came from the shadows into the moonlight beside the coach, Adam paused and
+gave three low weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the
+sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung. "I'll call twice,
+and then you answer if you are awake. If not, I'll call again."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be awake," I asserted positively. "Won't you&mdash;that is, must I fix&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all for to-night, and good night," he answered me with a laugh that
+was as reedy as the brisk wind in the trees. In a second he was padding
+away from me into the trees beyond the garden as swiftly as I suppose
+jaguars and lithe lions travel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't you want some supper?" I called into the moonlight, even
+running a few steps after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Parched corn in my pocket&mdash;lambs," came fluting back to me from the
+shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"Supper am sarved, little Mis'," Rufus announced from the hack door, as I
+stood still looking and listening into the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Cradd," I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old
+gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming
+silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life,
+"who is that remarkable man?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Si Beesley? Spare rib, dear?" was his disappointing but hospitable, answer
+in two return questions to my anxious inquiries about the Pan who had come
+out of the woods at my need.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I mean&mdash;mean, didn't you call him Adam?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody knows. Now, William, a spare rib and a muffin is real nourishment
+after the nightingale's tongues and snails you've been living on for
+twenty-odd years, isn't it?" As he spoke Uncle Cradd beamed on father, who
+was eating with the first show of real pleasure in food since we had had to
+send Henri back to New York, after the crash, weeping with all his
+French-cook soul at leaving us after fifteen years' service.</p>
+
+<p>"I have always enjoyed that essay of Charles Lamb's on roast pig, Cradd,"
+answered father as he took a second muffin. "I know that Lamb used to bore
+you, Cradd, but honestly now, doesn't his materialism seem&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Uncle Cradd, please tell me about that Adam man before you and father
+disappear into the eighteenth century," I pleaded, as I handed two cups of
+steaming coffee to Rufus to pass my two elderly savants.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to tell, Nancy child," answered Uncle Cradd, with an
+indulgent smile as he peered at me over his glasses. "Upon my word,
+William, Nancy is the living image of mother when we first remember her,
+isn't she? You are very beautiful, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," I answered hurriedly and hardly aware of what I was saying;
+"but I want to know where he came from, please, Uncle Cradd."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as near as I can remember he came out of the woods a year ago and
+has been in and out helping about the farms here in Harpeth Valley ever
+since. He never eats or sleeps anywhere, and he's a kind of wizard with
+animals, they say. And, William, he does know his Horace. Just last week he
+appeared with a little leather-covered volume, and for four mortal hours
+we&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They says dat red-haided peckerwoods goes to the devil on Fridays, and
+Mas' Adam he cured my hawgs with nothing but a sack full of green cabbage
+heads in January, he did," said Rufus, as he rolled his big black eyes and
+mysteriously shook his old head with its white kinks. "No physic a-tall,
+jest cabbage and a few turnips mixed in the mash. Yes, m'm, dey does go to
+the devil of a Friday, red-haided peckerwoods, dey does."</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, Cradd, I want you to see a little volume of the Odes I picked
+up in London last year. The dealer was a robber, and my dealer didn't want
+me to buy, but I thought of that time you and I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not one of the Cantridge edition?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I want you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>During all the rest of supper I sat and communed with my own self while
+father and Uncle Cradd banqueted with the Immortals.</p>
+
+<p>Even after we went back into the low-ceilinged old living-room, which was
+now lighted by two candles placed close together on a wonderful old
+mahogany table before the fire, one of the dignified chairs drawn up on
+each side, with my low seat between, I was busily mapping out a course of
+action that was to begin with my dawn signal.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to get into the&mdash;trunk as soon as possible. There is something I
+want to look up in my chicken book," I said before I seated myself in the
+midst of one of the battles that raged around Ilium.</p>
+
+<p>"Nancy, my dear, you will find that Rufus has arranged your Grandmother
+Craddock's room for you, and Mary Beesley came over to see that all was in
+order," said Uncle Cradd, coming and taking my face into his long, lean old
+hands. "God bless you, my dear, and keep you in His care here in the home
+of your forefathers. Good-night!" After an absent-minded kiss from father I
+was dismissed with a Sanskrit blessing from somewhere in the valley of the
+Euphrates up into my bedroom in the valley of Old Harpeth.</p>
+
+<p>If I had discovered the shadow of tradition in the rest of the old house, I
+walked into the very depths of them as I entered the bedroom of my
+foremothers. Deep crimson coals of fire were in a squat fireplace, and a
+last smoldering log of some kind of fragrant wood broke into fragments and
+sent up a little gust of blue and gold flame as if in celebration of my
+arrival. There was the remnant of a candle burning on a small table beside
+a bed that was very near, if not quite, five feet high, beside which were
+steps for the purposes of ascension. All the rest of the room was in a blur
+of lavender-scented darkness, and I only saw that both side walls folded
+down and were lit with the deep old gables, through the open windows of
+which young moon rays were struggling to help light the situation for me.
+As I looked at that wide, puffy old bed, with a blur of soft colors in its
+quilt and the valance around its posts and tester, I suddenly became as
+utterly weary as a child who sees its mother's arms outstretched at
+retiring time. I don't know how I got out of my clothes and into my lace
+and ribbons, with only the flickering candle and the dying log to see by,
+but in less time than I ever could have dreamed might be consumed in the
+processes of going to bed I climbed the little steps and dived into the
+soft bosom of the old four-poster.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless me and keep me in His care here in my grandmother's bed," I
+murmured after the invocation of Uncle Cradd, and that is all I knew after
+the first delicious sink and soft huddling of my body between sheets that
+felt as if they must be rich silk and smelled of old lavender.</p>
+
+<p>And then came a dream&mdash;a most lovely dream. I was at the opera in Gale
+Beacon's box, and Mr. G. Bird was out on the stage singing that glorious
+coo in the aria in Saint-Sa&euml;ns' "Samson and Delilah," and I was trying to
+answer him. Suddenly I was wide awake sitting up in a billowed softness,
+while moonlight of a different color was sifting in through the gable
+windows and the most lovely calling notes were coming in on its beams.
+Without a moment's hesitation I answered in about six notes of that Delilah
+song which was the only sound ready in my mind. Then I listened and I am
+not sure that I heard a reedy laugh under my window as just the two notes
+succeeding the ones I had given forth came in on the dawn beams. Then all
+was as still and quiet as the hush of midnight.</p>
+
+<p>In about two seconds I had vaulted forth from between the high posts,
+splashed into a funny old wooden tub bound together with brass rims,
+whirled my black mop into a knot, slipped into the modish boots, corduroys,
+and a linen smock, and was running out into the peculiar moon-dawn with the
+swiftness of a boy.</p>
+
+<p>But I was too late! The silver-moon sky was growing rosy over behind the
+barn as I peered about, and a mist was rolling away from between the trees,
+but not a soul in all the world was awake, and I was alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he call me?" I asked of myself under my breath. And the answer I got
+was from the Golden Bird, who sent a long, triumphant, eager "salutation to
+the dawn" from out the shadows of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>Eagerly I flew to him, and the minute I entered the apartment of the Bird
+family I discovered that I had been only half dreaming about my early
+morning opera. Pan had come and gone. Upon the door was pinned a piece of
+torn brown wrapping-paper upon which I found these penciled words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Give them about two quarts of warm meal mash, into which you put
+some ground turnips at noon. Better build about four nests in the
+dark under the bin, and be sure to disinfect them by white-washing
+inside and out. Put in clean hay. Dust all the beauties on their
+heads and under their wings with wood ashes in which you put a
+little of the powder you'll find in a piece of this paper in the
+right-hand corner of the bin. They'll want a good feed of ground
+grain at three o'clock. Get copperas from Rufus to put in their
+water, and I'll let you know later what else to do. Salutations!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Adam</span></p></div>
+
+<p>"I'm glad I got up so early if that's the day's program," I gasped to
+myself as I leaned against the bin from which the Golden Bird had already
+alighted and was commanding the Ladies Leghorn to descend&mdash;a command which
+they were obeying one at a time with outspread white wings that were
+handled with the height of awkwardness. "But I'll do it all if it kills
+me," I added, with my head up, as I began to scatter some of the big white
+grains that I knew to be corn and which, by lifting lids and peering into
+huge slanting top boxes set against the wall, I discovered along with a lot
+of other small brown seed stuff that I knew must be wheat. I was glad that
+I had remembered that Adam had called the room the feed-room so I had
+known where to look.</p>
+
+<p>It was so perfectly exciting to see all those fluffy white members of my
+family fortune scratching and clucking about my feet that I prolonged the
+process of the feeding by scattering only a few grains at a time until
+great shafts of golden morning sun were thrusting themselves in through the
+dim dusk and cobweb-veiled windows.</p>
+
+<p>"Morning, little Mis'! I axes yo' parding fer not having breakfast 'fore
+sun-up fer you, but they didn't never any Craddock ladies want theirn
+before nine o'clock before, they didn't," came Rufus's voice in solemn
+words of apology uttered in tones of serious reproof. As he spoke he stood
+as far from the door of the feed-room as possible and eyed the scratching
+Bird family with the deepest disapproval. "Feed-room ain't no place fer
+chickens; they oughter make they living on bugs and worms and sich."</p>
+
+<p>"These chickens are&mdash;are different, Rufus, and&mdash;and so am I," I answered
+him with dignity. "Call me when the gentlemen are ready to breakfast with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"They talked until most daylight, and I knows 'em well enough to not cook
+fer 'em until after ten o'clock. They's gentlemen, they is." The tones of
+his voice were perfectly servile, though it was plain to see that his
+mental processes were not.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I'll eat mine now, Rufus, and then I want you to get me a&mdash;a
+hammer and some nails. Also a bucket of whitewash," I said as I closed the
+door upon the Birds and preceded him to the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my Lawd-a-mussy!" he exclaimed as he dived into the refuge of the
+kitchen, completely routed, to appear with my breakfast upon his tray and
+with such dignity in his mien that it was pathetic. I was merciful while I
+consumed the meal which was an exact repetition of the supper of the ribs
+of the hog and muffins and coffee; then I threw another fit into him, to
+quote from Matthew at his worst in the way of diction.</p>
+
+<p>"Please set a bucket of the wood ashes from the living-room fire out at
+the barn for me, Rufus," I commanded him with pleasant firmness.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madam," was the answer I got in a tone of cold despair. It was thus
+that the feud with my family traditions was established.</p>
+
+<p>"Also, Rufus, please bring the saw with the hammer and the nails," was my
+last hand-grenade as I departed out the back door to the barn. From the old
+clock standing against the wall in the back hall I discovered the hour to
+be exactly seven-thirty, and I felt that I had what would seem like a week
+ahead of me before the setting of the sun. However, I was wrong in my
+judgment, for time fairly fled from me, and it was nine o'clock by my
+platinum wrist-watch before I had more than got one very wobbly-looking box
+nailed together on the floor of the barn, and I was deep in both pride and
+exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew I could do it, but I didn't believe it," I was remarking to myself
+in great congratulations when a shadow fell across the light from the door.
+I looked up and, behold, Mrs. Silas Beesley loomed up against the sun and
+seemed to shine with equal refulgence to my delighted eyes! In her hand she
+held a plate covered with a snowy napkin, and her blue eyes danced with
+delighted astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, Nancy!" she exclaimed, as she seated herself upon a bench by
+the door and began to fan herself with a corner of a snowy kerchief that
+crossed her ample bosom. "Looks like you have begun sawing and nailing at
+the Craddock family estate pretty early in the action though it's none too
+soon, and mighty glad I am to see you do it while there is still a little
+odd lumber left. I've always said that it's women folks that prop a family
+and it will soon tumble without 'em. I am so glad you've come, honeybunch,
+that tears are laughing themselves out of the corner of my eyes." This
+time the white kerchief was dabbed over the keen blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it all&mdash;very&mdash;very bad, Mrs.&mdash;I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked, as I laid
+down my dull-toothed instrument for the dissection of the plank, and sank
+cross-legged on the barn floor in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it might be worse," she answered as she smiled again with resolution.
+"Rufus has eleven nice hogs and feed enough for them until summer, thanks
+to the help of Adam in tending the ten-acre river-bottom field, which they
+made produce more than any one else in the river bend got off of fifty.
+Nobody can take the house, because it is hitched on to you with entailment,
+and though the croppers have skimmed off all the cream of the land, the
+clay bottom of it is obliged to be yours. Now that you and William have
+come with a little money the fields can all be restored. Adam will help you
+like he did Hiram Wade down the road there. It only cost him about ten
+dollars to the acre.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but father and I&mdash;that is, Aunt Mary, you know father has lost all
+his property and Uncle Cradd assured us that&mdash;that there was plenty for us
+all at Elmnest," I said in a faltering tone of voice as a feeling of
+descending tragedy struck into my heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Cradd and Rufus have lived on hog, head, heels, and tail for over a year,
+with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for.
+I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with
+those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse
+sewed with gold thread with you. I said to Silas as he put out the lamp
+last night, 'The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the
+track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of
+which Moseby Craddock is one.' 'Why, she's so fine she can't eat eggs outen
+chickens that costs less than maybe a hundred dollars the dozen,' answered
+Silas to me as he put out the cat."</p>
+
+<p>"They cost eight hundred and fifty dollars and they are all I have got in
+the world. Father gave up everything, and I sold my clothes and the cars to
+buy back his library and&mdash;and the chickens," I said with the terror
+pressing still more heavily down upon me.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shouldn't call them chickens spilled milk. Just listen at 'em!"
+And just as we had arrived at the point of desperation in our conversation
+a diversion occurred in the way of two loud cacklings from the feed-room
+and the most ringing and triumphant crow that I am sure ever issued from
+the throat of a thoroughbred cock. "'Tain't possible for 'em to have laid
+this quick after traveling," said Aunt Mary, but she was almost as fleet as
+I was in her progress to the feed-room door. And behold!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you think about that, right out of the crate just last
+night, no nests nor nothing!" she exclaimed as we both paused and gazed at
+two huge white eggs in hastily scratched nests beside the bin over which
+two of the very most lovely white Leghorn ladies were proudly standing and
+clucking, while between them Mr. G. Bird was crowing with such evident
+pride that I was afraid he would split his crimson throat. All the other
+white Birds were clucking excitedly as if issuing hen promissory notes upon
+their futures.</p>
+
+<p>"They're omens of good luck, bless the Lord, Honeybunch. Pick 'em right
+up!" exclaimed Mrs. Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they are warm!" I cried as I picked the two treasures up with reverent
+hands and cuddled them against the linen of the smock over my breast in
+which my heart was beating high with excitement. And as I held them there
+all threat of life vanished never to return, no matter through what
+vicissitudes the Golden Bird family and I were to pass.</p>
+
+<p>"You can eat these, and next week you can begin to save for a setting as
+soon as you can get a hen ready. I'll lend you the first one of mine that
+broods," said Mrs. Silas as she took both the beautiful treasures into one
+of her large hands with what I thought was criminal carelessness, but
+didn't like to say so.</p>
+
+<p>"I've ordered a three-hundred-egg incubator for them," I said proudly, as I
+gently took the warm treasures back into my hand. "Incubators are so much
+more sanitary and intelligent than hens," I added with all the surety of
+the advertisement for the mechanical hen which I had answered with
+thirty-five dollars obtained from the sale of the last fluffy petticoat I
+had hoped to retain, but which I gave up gladly after reading the
+advertisement. Two most lovely chemises had gone for the two brooders that
+were to accompany the incubator, and it seemed hard to think that I would
+have to wait ten days to receive the fruits of my feminine sacrifice from
+the slow shipping service of the railroad.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ever say that again, Nancy! Hens have more genuine wisdom growing
+at the roots of their pin feathers than most women display during the span
+of their entire lives, and they make very much better mothers," reproved
+Aunt Mary, with sweet firmness. "Just you wait and see which brings out
+your prize birds, the wooden box or the hen. When men invent something with
+a mother's heart, they had better name it angel and admit that the kingdom
+has come. Bless my soul; these biscuits I brought over for you-all's
+breakfast are stone-cold!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've had my breakfast a half a day ago," I answered. "You go in and start
+father and Uncle Cradd off with the biscuits while I finish the nest
+and&mdash;and do some more things for my family fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Child, if you attempt to do the things that Adam wants you to do for and
+with live stock you may see miracles being hatched out and born, but you'll
+be too worn out to notice 'em. Trap nests indeed! I've got to have some
+time to make my water waves and offer daily prayer!" And with this
+ejaculation of good-natured indignation, evidently at the memory of sundry
+and various poultry prods, Mrs. Silas betook herself to the house with a
+beautiful and serene dignity. As she went she stopped to break a sprig from
+a huge old lilac that was beginning to burst its brown buds and to put up
+half a yard of rambler that trailed across the path with its treacherous
+thorns.</p>
+
+<p>"Your lilacs are breaking scent already," she called back to me over her
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>A woman can experience no greater sensation of joy than that which she
+feels when she first realizes that she is the mistress of a lilac bush.
+Neither her d&eacute;but dance nor her first proposal of sentiment equals it. It
+is the same way about the first egg she gathers with her own hands; the
+sensation is indescribable.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do all the things he says do for you and the family, Mr. G. Bird, if
+it kills me, as it probably will," I said with resolution as I drove a
+last wobbly nail into the first nest, and took up the saw to again attack
+the odds and ends of old plank I had collected on the barn floor. "If I can
+make one nest in two hours, I can make two more in four more, and then I
+will have time for the rest of the things," I assured myself as I again
+looked at my wrist-watch, and began to saw with my knee holding the tough
+old plank in place across a rickety box.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>It is beautiful how sometimes deserving courage is rewarded if it just goes
+on deserving long enough. After about an hour's hand-to-saw bout with the
+old plank I was just chewing through the last inch of the last of the four
+sides of nest number two when I suddenly stopped and listened. Far away to
+the front of the house I heard hot oaths being uttered by the engine in a
+huge racing-machine with a powerful chug with which I was quite familiar.
+While I listened, the motor in agony gave a snort as it bounded over some
+kind of obstruction and in two seconds, as I stood saw in hand, with not
+enough time to wipe the sweat of toil from my brow, the huge blue machine
+swept around the corner of the house, brought up beside the family coach,
+which was still standing in front of the barn, and Matthew flung himself
+out of it and to my side.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy smokers, Ann, but you look good in that get-up!" he exclaimed as he
+regarded me with the delight with which a person might greet a friend or
+relative whom he had long considered dead or lost. "Why, you look just as
+if you had stepped right out of the 'Elite Review.' And the saw, too, makes
+a good note of human interest."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's chicken interest and not human, Matthew Berry," I said,
+answering his levity with spirit. "And I'm sorry I can't be at home for
+your amusement to-day, but my chickens are laying while I wait, and the
+least I can do is to get these nests ready for 'em. You'll excuse me, won't
+you, and go in to talk with father and Uncle Cradd?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're not producing dividends already, are they, Ann? Why, you only
+started the Consolidated Egg Co. yesterday!" exclaimed Matthew, with
+insulting doubt of my veracity in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Look there!" I said, as I pointed to my two large pearls, which I had
+carefully put in the soft felt hat I had purchased to go with the smocks
+for fifteen dollars at Goertz's.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed Matthew, with real
+astonishment, as he sat down on his heels and took the two treasures into
+his highly manicured hands. "Gee, they are right hot off the bat!" he
+exclaimed, as he detected some of the warmth still left in them, I suppose.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I've got to get these nests done right away so as to be ready to
+catch the rest of them," I said and began to saw furiously, as if I were
+constructing a bucket to catch a deluge.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, gimme the saw, Ann, and you get the fodder and things to put in the
+bottom of them to keep them from smashing as they come," said Matthew, as
+he flung off his coat, jammed his motor-cap on the back of his head, and
+took the saw from my unresisting hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get the whitewash and whiten them as you finish them," I said, as I
+hurriedly consulted the torn piece of wrapping-paper I took from one of
+the huge pockets of my smock.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, but you had better hump yourself, for I believe I'm going to be
+some carpenter. This saw has a kind of affinity feeling to my hand," said
+Matthew, as he put his foot on one end of the plank and began to make the
+saw fly through the wood like a silver knife through fluffy cake. If saws
+were the only witnesses, the superiority of men over women would be
+established in very short order. "And say, Ann, I wish you would be
+thinking what you are going to charge for a half interest in this business.
+Law and real estate look slow to me after these returns right before my
+eyes," he added, as he stopped to move the pearl treasures farther out of
+the way of a possible flying plank.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to give you one of them to take home with you, Matt," I
+answered, with a most generous return of his appreciation of these
+foundation pebbles of my family fortune. Then I went to appeal to Rufus for
+the whitewash.</p>
+
+<p>"They's a half barrel uf lime and a bucket and bresh in the corner uf the
+barn what Mas' Adams made me git, he did; but it's fer the hawgs and can't
+be wasted on no chickens," he said, answering my very courteous request
+with a great lack of graciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"The chickens will pay it back to the hogs, Rufus," I answered airily as I
+ran back to the barn, eager for the fray.</p>
+
+<p>And a gorgeous fray it was, with Matthew whistling and directing and
+pounding and having the time of his very frivolous life.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of course, nobody in these advanced times thinks that it is not
+absolutely possible, even easy, for a woman to live any kind of
+constructive life she chooses entirely without assistance from a man, but
+she'll get to the place she has started for just about a year after she
+would have arrived if a man had happened along to do the sawing. The way my
+friend Matthew Berry cut and hammered off one by one the directions on that
+piece of paper in my smock pocket would have proved the proposition above
+stated to any doubtful woman. And while Matthew and I had had many happy
+times together at balls and parties and dinners and long flights in our
+cars and at the theatre and opera, also in dim corners in gorgeous clothes,
+I am sure we had never been so happy as we were that morning while we
+labored together in the interest of Mr. G. Bird and family. We went beyond
+the paper directions and delved in my book and hammered away until, when
+Rufus, with stately coldness, announced some time after noon that dinner
+was served, we both declared that it was impossible, though Matthew was at
+that moment performing the last chore commanded by dusting the medicated
+ashes under the last wing of the last Lady Leghorn, held tenderly in my
+arms. The mash had been concocted and heated in the cleansed whitewash
+bucket over a fire improvised by Matthew between two stones beside the
+barn, because I did not dare disturb Rufus again, and the model nests were
+all in place and ready for the downpour of pearls that we expected at any
+time, and there was nothing left to do that we could think of or read about
+in the book.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go in and get a bite with Father Craddock and the twin, and then
+we'll read things to do this afternoon in the book where you got those
+directions," said Matthew as he started towards the house in the wake of
+Rufus' retiring apron.</p>
+
+<p>I hadn't broken Pan to Matthew, and I didn't know exactly why. Perhaps I
+didn't quite believe in the red-headed Peckerwood myself just then, and
+felt unable to incarnate him to Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Cradd's welcome to Matthew was very stately and friendly when we went
+in and found him and father in their high-back chairs on each side of the
+table, waging the classic argument that Rufus had reported them to have
+discontinued at an early hour of the morning. Father was delighted with the
+package of books that Matthew had brought out with him in his car, because
+father considered them too valuable to be transported in the wagon which
+was to bring the rest of the library.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a little of the cream of the collection, Cradd," he said as he
+unwrapped a small leather-covered volume which Matthew had transported in
+the pocket over his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Just five hundred dollars' worth of cream," whispered Matthew to me, with
+a whimsical look at the small and very ancient specimen of Americana. "It
+is a good thing that Senator Proctor has only Belle and let her have the
+six thousand cash for the Chauvenaise, and Bess wanted your little Royal in
+a hurry, though she got a bargain at that. Still the library is really
+worth five times what you paid."</p>
+
+<p>"Sh&mdash;hush!" I said as I led the way before the parental twins into the old
+dining-room. Father hadn't even questioned how he was to have the library
+saved for him, and of course Uncle Cradd knew nothing at all about the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>After seating me with the same ceremony he had employed since my arrival
+into the family, though with hostility bristling psychologically for my
+plebeian intrusion into his traditions of the Craddock ladies, Rufus
+appalled me by offering me for the third time since my arrival at Elmnest
+roasted ribs of the hog, muffins and coffee. Only my training in the social
+customs of a world beyond the ken of Rufus kept me from exclaiming with
+protest, but I came to myself to discover that Matthew was devouring huge
+slabs of the roasted bones and half a dozen batches of the corn bread in a
+manner that was ravenously unconventional. I remembered that the last time
+I had seen him at repast, just about forty-eight hours past, he had speared
+a croquette of chicken with disdain, and I decided not to apologize for the
+meal even in the most subtle way. Also the spectacle of father polishing
+off the small bones, when I remembered the efforts of devoted Henri to
+tempt his appetite with sophisticated food, filled me with a queer
+primitive feeling that made it possible for me to fall upon my series of
+the ribs with an ardor which I had thought I was incapable of.</p>
+
+<p>"I call that some food," sighed Matthew, as he regarded the pile of bones
+in his plate with the greatest satisfaction in his appeased eyes. I felt
+Rufus melt behind me as he passed the muffins again.</p>
+
+<p>"The native food of the Harpeth Valley nourishes specially fine men&mdash;and
+very beautiful women," answered Uncle Cradd, with a glance of pride, first
+at me and then at father in his spare, but muscular, uprightness and
+finally at Matthew, with his one hundred and eighty pounds of brawn packed
+on his six-foot skeleton in the most beautiful lines and curves of strength
+and distinction.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that reminds me, Mr. Craddock, and you, too, Father of Ann," said
+Matthew, as he reached into his pocket and hurriedly drew out a huge
+letter. "I have a proposition that came to the firm this morning to talk
+over with you two gentlemen. Ann thought I came out to help her settle the
+Bird family comfortably, and for a while I forgot and thought so too, but
+now I'll have to ask you two gentlemen to talk business, though I must
+confess the matter puzzles me not a little."</p>
+
+<p>"The art of dining and the craft of business should never be commingled;
+let us repair to the library," said Uncle Cradd, thus placing the spare
+ribs in an artistic atmosphere and at the same time aiming an arrow of
+criticism, though unconscious, at the custom of the world out over Paradise
+Ridge of feeding business conditions down the throat of an adversary with
+his food and drink, specially drink.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why, but I'm scared to death now that I'm up against it,"
+Matthew confided to me as he first took a legal-looking piece of paper from
+his pocket and then hastily put it back as he and I followed the parental
+twins down the hall and into the library.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you rescue me, Ann?" he whispered as he ceremoniously seated me in
+my low chair and took a straight one beside father as Uncle Cradd stood
+tall, huge and towering on the old home-woven rug before the small fire in
+the huge rock chimney.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered as I settled back in the little chair and took one
+passionately delighted look around the old room, which I was seeing in the
+broad light of day for the first time. I am glad that the old home which
+had been the stronghold of my foremothers and fathers was thus revealed to
+me in half lights and a little at a time; I couldn't have stood the ecstasy
+of it all at once. The room was the low-beamed old wonder that I had felt
+it to be in the candle-light the night before, only now the soft richness
+of the paneling, which held back into the gloom the faded colors of the
+books that lined the walls, the mellowed glow of the rough stone of the
+chimney, and the faded hand-woven rugs on the floor made it all look like
+one of Rembrandt's or Franz Hals' canvases. But in a few seconds I came
+back from the joy of it to a consciousness of what Matthew Berry was
+saying.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he was explaining with enthusiasm, "that this new form of office
+for the state commissioner of agriculture is really a part of the great
+program of preparedness that has been evolving here in America since the
+Great War began, and nobody knows just what to expect of it as yet. The
+request from the President for the appointment of Evan Baldwin to take the
+portfolio in the State of Harpeth has made everybody see that the President
+means business with the States, and that America is to be made to produce
+her own food and the food of the rest of the world that needs it. When a
+scientist like Baldwin, worth millions and with experiment stations of
+hundreds of acres in most states in the Union, which are coining more
+millions with their propagation output, steps out and stands shoulder to
+shoulder with Edison in working to get the United States prepared to feed
+the world as well as to fend off any of that world that menaces it, the
+rest of us have got to get up and hustle, some with a musket and some with
+a plow."</p>
+
+<p>"And some with an egg-basket," I added, as my cheeks began to glow with
+something I hadn't ever felt before, but which I classified as patriotism.</p>
+
+<p>"My country has only to call us and we'll answer to the whole of our
+kingdom, William and I. We were lads too young to carry muskets against her
+in the Civil war, but we, with Rufus, plowed these acres with children's
+strength, and the larger portion of our products went to feed hungry
+soldiers both blue and gray. I say, just let my country call William and
+me!" As Uncle Cradd spoke, his back straightened, and I saw that he must
+have been every inch of six feet three in his youth. "William?"</p>
+
+<p>"With you, Cradd," answered father quietly, and I felt that that formula
+was the one by which they had lived their joint youth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that is about what they are asking of you, Mr. Craddock," said
+Matthew, his cheeks red with the glow of the blood Uncle Cradd had called
+up in his enthusiastic heart. "The new State secretary of agriculture has
+asked our firm to undertake negotiations for the purchase of Elmnest, for a
+recruiting station for the experts who are to take over the organizing of
+the farming interests in the Harpeth Valley, which is the central section
+of the State of Harpeth. They offer three hundred dollars an acre for the
+whole tract of two hundred acres, despite the fact that some of it is worn
+almost to its subsoil. They consider that as valuable, because they wish to
+give demonstrations and try experiments in land restoration, though very
+little of that is needed here in the valley. It's a pretty big thing, Mr.
+Craddock and Father William, sixty thousand dollars will provide all the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I understand that this proposition is put to us in the form of a
+demand of our Government upon our patriotism?" asked Uncle Cradd in a
+booming voice, while father only looked uncertain and ready to say, "With
+you, Cradd." I sat speechless for a moment, with a queer pain in my heart
+that I did not for the first second understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not exactly that, Mr. Craddock, but something like it in a&mdash;"
+Matthew was beginning to say in a judicial way.</p>
+
+<p>"That is enough, Matthew Berry, son of the friend of my youth. If the
+United States needs Elmnest for national defenses, I am willing to give it
+up&mdash;indeed insist on presenting it to the Government except for a small
+part of the sum mentioned, which is needed for the simple and declining
+lives of my brother William, Rufus, and me, and my niece Nancy. Will you so
+convey our answer, William?"</p>
+
+<p>"With you, Cradd," came the devoted formula with which father slipped back
+finally into the dependence of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>"Good, Mr. Craddock," exclaimed Matthew, and I could see visions of Ann
+Craddock reclaimed from her farmer's smock in a ball-gown upon the floor
+of the country club in the fleeting glance of triumph he gave me. "Of
+course, about the price&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then in that counsel of the mighty arose Ann Craddock, farm woman in the
+stronghold of her worn-out acres.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it or is it not true, Uncle Cradd, that no deed to this property can be
+made without my consent?" I asked calmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, Nancy," answered Uncle Cradd, indulgently. "But this is a matter
+for your father and me to decide for you. I am sure you cannot fail in
+patriotism, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," I answered. "I am going to be more patriotic than any woman ever
+was before. I am not going to sell my Grandmother's rosebushes in their
+gardens or the acres that have nourished my family since its infancy in
+America long before this Evan Baldwin ever had any family, I feel sure, for
+sixty thousand dollars to go back and sit down in a corner with. I am going
+to demonstrate to the United States what one woman can do in the way of
+nutriment production aided by one beautiful rooster and ten equally
+beautiful hens, and when they begin to take stock of the resources of this
+Government, we women of the Harpeth Valley will be there with our
+egg-baskets. Just take that answer to your Mr. Evan Baldwin, Matthew Berry,
+and I'll never forgive you for this insult."</p>
+
+<p>"Nancy!" ejaculated Uncle Cradd with stern amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't do a thing with her when she looks like that, Cradd," said father,
+as he comfortably lighted a cigar and drew the small leather-covered book
+towards him with hungry fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Ann," began Matthew, in the soothing tone of voice he had seen fail
+on me many times, "you don't understand entirely, and your situation is
+pretty desperate in&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I do, I do understand that when I refuse this offer I am assuming enormous
+obligations, Matthew Berry," I answered, with my head in the air and
+absolute courage in my heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I ask you to bear witness, Matthew, to what my answer to the demand of my
+country would have been if I alone could have answered, but Nancy is within
+her rights, and I protect the rights of a woman before those of any man,"
+said Uncle Cradd, and there was not a trace of relief in his fine old face
+that he was to be saved from a parting with the land that had been the love
+of his life, but one of affectionate regard and admiration for me. "Also
+say to the secretary of agriculture that a Craddock woman is as good as her
+word, and that the Harpeth Valley can be depended upon to lead the United
+States in the production of eggs in&mdash;when shall I promise, Nancy?"</p>
+
+<p>"About&mdash;about a year," I answered, searching in my mind for some data from
+the huge red book as to when wealth from the hen could be expected to roll
+in in response to the "good management" I felt even then capable of
+displaying. Even now I can't blame myself for over-confidence when I think
+of the two white pearls in my hat on the table beside father's book.</p>
+
+<p>"Better make it two," advised Matthew cautiously, but with a gleam of
+enthusiasm as he also glanced at the eggs. That gleam was what earned my
+forgiveness for his daring to come upon me with such a mission.</p>
+
+<p>"Say eighteen months. That will be the end of the second season," I
+answered with decision. "And it is about time for me to give the last
+feeding of my hostages to the United States and Mr. Evan Baldwin. You'll
+excuse me, Matthew?" I asked politely, but cruelly, for I knew he intended
+to follow me immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Now here is your line of dispute, Cradd, just as I said," exclaimed
+father, who had opened his leather treasure and been hunting through its
+pages even before my heroics had completely exploded. And before Matthew
+and I had left the room, they were off on a bat with some favorite Ancient.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Of course, Ann, you <i>do</i> realize just what you are doing?" asked Matthew
+of me, as we walked on the moss-green flagstones back to the barn, and his
+voice was so sweet and gentle with solicitude that I felt I must answer him
+seriously and take him into my confidence. Affection is a note that one
+must always make payment on.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Matt, I do realize that those two are in a way children, for whose
+maintenance I have made myself responsible, and my mind is scared to death,
+but my heart is beating so high with courage that I can hardly stand it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come with me, Ann, and let me&mdash;" Matthew wooed.</p>
+
+<p>"Matt," I answered gravely, "I haven't been here twenty-four hours yet, but
+when the thought of having it all taken away came to me, something in me
+rose and made me rage, rage, as I did in the house. I don't know what it
+is, but there is something in this low old farm-house, this tumble-down old
+barn, that leafless old garden with its crumbling brick walks, and these
+neglected, worn-out old acres, which seems to&mdash;to feed me and which I know
+I would perish without. Oh, please understand and&mdash;and help me a little
+like you did this morning," I ended with a broken plea, as I stretched out
+my hand to him just as I entered the door of my barn&mdash;castle of dreams for
+the future.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Lord, the pluck of women!" Matthew exclaimed reverently, down in his
+throat. "I'll be here, Ann, whenever you want me, and if you say that
+chickens must fill my future life, then chickens it shall be," he added,
+rising to the surface of the question again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Matt, you are a darling, and I&mdash;" I was exclaiming when a soft voice
+from out of the shadows of the barn interrupted me and an apple-blossom in
+the shape of a girl drifted into the late afternoon sunlight from the
+direction of the feed-room.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Polly Beesley, and mother sent these eggs to scramble with the ones
+you got this morning for supper," she said in a low voice that was
+positively fragrant with sweetness. Two huge plaits of corn-silk hair fell
+over her shoulders, and her eyes were as shy and blue as violets were
+before they became a large commercial product. Her gingham dress was cut
+with decorum just below her shoe-tops and, taking into consideration the
+prevailing mode, its length, fullness, and ruffles made the slim young
+thing look like a picture from the same review from which I had cut my
+smocks. However, I am sure that if she had been at the between six and
+eighteen age year before last, when about two and a half yards of gingham
+would have been modish for her costume, she would still have been attired
+in the voluminous ruffles.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy smokes," I thought I heard Matthew gurgle, and I felt him start at
+the apparition, though the young thing never so much as glanced in his
+direction as she tendered me a quaint little basket in which lay half a
+dozen eggs, real homely brown eggs and not pearl treasures.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you, Polly dear," I answered with enthusiasm, and in obedience
+to some urge resulting from the generations ahead of Polly and my
+incarnation in the atmosphere of Riverfield, my lips met the rosy ones that
+were held up to me. I felt sorry for Matthew, and I couldn't restrain a
+glance of mischief at him that crossed his that were fixed on the yellow
+braids.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't believe it of this day and generation," I heard him mutter as I
+presented him to Polly, who answered that she was "pleased to make his
+acquaintance," in a voice in which terror belied the sentiment expressed.</p>
+
+<p>In her eyes traces of that same terror remained until suddenly the Golden
+Bird stepped proudly out of the bushes with the Ladies Bird, clucking and
+scratching along behind him. He had led the family out into the pasture
+and was now wisely returning them to the barn before the setting of the
+sun. I thought I had never seen him look so handsome, and no wonder his
+conquest was immediate.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how beautiful," exclaimed Polly, while all restraint left her young
+face and body as she fell on her knees before the Sultan. "Chick, chick,
+chick," she wooed, in the words that Pan had used to command, and with a
+delight equal to hers in the introduction, the Bird came toward her. "Oh,
+please, sir, Mr.&mdash;Mr. Berry, get me some corn quick&mdash;quick! I want to
+squeeze him once," she demanded of Matthew, confident where she had before
+been fearful. His response was long-limbed and enthusiastic, so that in a
+few seconds Mr. G. Bird stood pecking grains from her hand. The spectacle
+was so lovely that I was not at all troubled by twinges of jealousy, but
+enjoyed it, for even at that early moment I think I felt a mercenary
+interest in seeing the friendship between the Golden Bird and the
+Apple-Blossom sealed. In her I psychologically scented an ally, and I
+enjoyed the hug bestowed upon him fully as much or even more than he did.
+It was a lovely picture that the kiddie made as she knelt at our feet with
+the white fluff balls and wings whirring and clucking around her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; let's go into the chicken business, Ann," said Matthew, as his eyes
+danced with artistic pleasure. "You love 'em, don't you, Miss&mdash;Miss
+Corn-tassel?" he asked, with teasing delight in his voice as well as in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes sir," she answered as she looked up at him merrily, all fear of him
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, what do you think of going into the business with your Uncle Matthew
+if Ann refuses to sell a half interest in hers to me?" he asked of her in
+his jolly booming voice, with a smile many inches wide across his face.
+"I'll put up the capital, you put up the work, and we'll take all the
+prizes away from Ann."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to take the prizes from Miss Ann. I'd rather have Reds so we
+could both get ribbons," she answered as she dimpled up at me as
+affectionately as if she had tagged at my gingham skirts at our sixth and
+second years.</p>
+
+<p>"Reds it shall be, Corn-tassel, and I'll be back with them as soon as an
+advertisement in the daily papers can find them for me. I'll start the
+search right now," said Matthew, teasing the kiddie as if he had known her
+all his life, but with an expression turning to the genuine poultry
+business enthusiasm. "You and Ann come on down to the gate with me in the
+car and we'll talk&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But just here an interruption occurred in the way of a hoarse squawk coming
+from around the corner of the house. Hastily my eye called the roll of the
+Ladies of Leghorn and found them all present just as the tall young farmer
+whose ears had cooled down the day before over at Riverfield enough to let
+him admire the Golden Bird and family appeared around from behind the huge
+lilac at the corner of the house. He was attired as yesterday in the
+beautiful dull-blue overall and jacket; his hair was the color of Polly's
+and shocked from under the edges of a floppy gray hat, and in his arms he
+carried a large hen the identical color of Pan's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Howdy, Miss Nancy," he said in a voice as shy as Polly's, and his eyes
+were also as blue and shy as hers. He looked right through Matthew until I
+introduced them, then he shifted the hen and shook hands with Polly's
+"Pleased to make your acquaintance" greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad to meet you, Mr. Beesley," said Matthew, exerting more charm of
+manner than I had ever seen him use before. "My, but that is a gorgeous
+bird you have!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a right good hen, but she's a mongrel. There isn't a single
+thoroughbred Rhode Island Red hereabouts. I aim to get a setting of pure
+eggs for Polly this spring if I sell my hawgs as good as Mr. Adam perdicks
+I will. I brought her as a present to you, Miss Nancy, 'cause she's been
+a-brooding about two days, and if you get together a setting of eggs the
+last of next week she'll hatch 'em all. She carried three broods last
+year."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Beesley, how lovely of you," I exclaimed, as I reached out my arms
+for the gorgeous old red ally. "I like her better than any present I ever
+had in all my life!" This I said before the face of Matthew Berry, with a
+complete loss of memory of all of the wonderful things he had been giving
+me from my d&eacute;but bouquet of white orchids and violets to the tiny scarab
+from the robe of an Egyptian princess that I wore in the clasp of my
+platinum wrist-watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I should say!" Matthew exclaimed, with not a thought of the
+comparison in his generous mind. "Did you know that your sister, Miss
+Polly, and I are going into the Rhode Island Red business together? We were
+just deciding the details as you came around the house. What do you say to
+coming in? How many shall I buy? Say, about fifty hens and half a dozen
+cocks? Let's start big while we are about it. If Ann is going to make
+three thousand dollars a year off one rooster and ten hens, we can make
+fifteen off of five times as many."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and we can bust the business all to pieces with too much stock,"
+answered the brother Corn-tassel. "Miss Nancy has got real horse-sense
+starting small, and chicken-sense too."</p>
+
+<p>"I stand corrected," answered Matthew. "I see that a flyer cannot be taken
+in chickens any higher than a hen can fly. I'm growing heady over this
+business and must go back to town to set the wheels in motion. All of you
+ride down to the gate with me and find out what the word jolt means."</p>
+
+<p>Then after housing the Bird family in the feed-room with their guest, all
+happily at scratch in the hay for the wheat and corn thrown to them by the
+Corn-tassels while Matthew and I went in to bid the paternal twins good-by,
+we all rode merrily and joltily down the long avenue under the old elms to
+the big gate at the square in Riverfield. In front of the
+post-office-bank-grocery emporium we deposited the Corn-tassels, introduced
+Matthew to Aunt Mary and Uncle Silas, with the most cordial results on both
+sides, and then turned in the car out the Riverfield ribbon instead of in.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a spin will do you good, sweet thing," said Matthew, as I settled
+down close enough to his shoulder to talk and not interrupt the powerful
+engine. "I want you to myself for a small moment away from your live stock,
+human and inhuman."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Matt, there is nobody just like you and you have made this
+day&mdash;possible," I said as I snuggled down into the soft cushions.</p>
+
+<p>"Honestly, Ann, do you mean positively that you don't want me&mdash;now?" he
+asked me as he sent the car whirling into the sun setting over Old Harpeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Not&mdash;now," I answered bravely, though I nestled a little closer to him. He
+seemed so good and strong and&mdash;certain.</p>
+
+<p>"All right then, I'll take the next best and I'll come in to your farm
+circle as partner or competitor or any old thing that keeps me in your
+aura. I'll grow chickens with the Corn-tassels or&mdash;here we turn back for I
+want to get out again over that bit of mountain-path that leads to your
+citadel before twilight."</p>
+
+<p>"Put me out at the gate, Matt. I want to walk up," I said, and held to it
+against his protest. I finally made him see that I really was not equal to
+another "rocking" over the road, and I stood and watched him drive the huge
+car away from me down the Riverfield ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I love him and just don't know it," I said to myself, as I
+stood at the big gate and watched him going away from me into life as I had
+known it since birth until twenty-four hours past. And from that vision of
+my past I turned in the sunset light of the present and began to walk
+slowly up the long avenue into my future. "I've never known anything but
+dancing and motoring and being happy, and how could that teach any woman
+what love is?" I queried as I stopped and picked up a small yellow flower
+out of a nest of green leaves that some sort of ancestral influence must
+have introduced to me as dandelion, for I had never really met one before.
+I felt a pale reflection of the glow I had experienced when I took the two
+warm pearls in my hands in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly something happened that thrilled me first with interest and
+then with&mdash;I don't know what to call it, but it was not fear. A fierce
+little wind, that was earthy and sweet, but strong, ruffled across my path
+and up into the tops of the elms, and with a bit of fury tore down an old
+bird's-nest and flung it at my feet. It was soft and downy with bits of fur
+and hair and wool inside, but it was all rent in two.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if I can hold my Elmnest steady on the limb when&mdash;" I was saying
+to myself unsteadily, with a mist in my eyes for the small wrecked home,
+when from somewhere over my left shoulder there came Pan's reedy call, and
+it ended with the two Delilah notes that I had thought I heard in the early
+morning. It was with no will of my own that I answered with that coo which
+I had heard Mr. G. Bird singing on the stage of the Metropolitan in my dawn
+dream. Also I crashed rapidly through the bushes in the direction of the
+call that this time came imperatively and without the coo.</p>
+
+<p>"To your left and then straight toward the oak-tree," came human words from
+Pan in quick command and direction. "Hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>With a last struggle with the briars I broke out into a small open space
+under the spreading branches of the old oak and upon a scene of tragedy,
+that is, it was almost tragedy, for the poor old sheep was lying flat with
+pathetic inertia while Adam stood over her with something in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the fine Southdown ewe I persuaded Rufus to trade for one of the
+precious hogs," he said, with not so much as a word of greeting or interest
+personal to me in his voice or glance, but with such wonderful tenderness
+that I came close to him because I couldn't resist it. "She dropped twin
+lambs last night and she is down with exhaustion. They are getting cold,
+and I want to take her right up to the barn where I can bed her on hay and
+get something hot into all three. Can you cuddle the lambs and carry them
+while I shoulder her?" As he spoke he held out his armful to me without
+wounding me by waiting for my consent.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the poor, cold babies!" I exclaimed, as I lifted the skirt of my long,
+fashionable, heavy linen smock and wrapped them in it and my arms, close
+against my warm solar plexus, which glowed at their soft huddling. One tiny
+thing reached out a little red tongue and feebly licked my bare wrist, and
+I returned the caress of introduction with a kiss on its little snowy,
+woolly head.</p>
+
+<p>"You've the lovesome hand with the beasties," said Pan as he smiled down on
+the lambs and me.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Picture_2" id="Picture_2"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 402px;">
+<img src="images/illustr-02.jpg" width="402" height="500" alt="A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while
+Adam stood over her with something in his arms" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while
+Adam stood over her with something in his arms</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I like 'em because they make me sorter grow inside some place, I don't
+know exactly where," I answered as I adjusted my woolly burden for what I
+knew would seem a long march. "I'll get 'em to the barn all right," I
+assured their first friend, who was now bending over the poor mother. "This
+is what I took Russian ballet dancing and played golf for, only I didn't
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have executed more Baskt twists and done more holes a day if you had
+known," said Adam, with beautiful unbounded faith in me, as he braced his
+legs far apart and lifted the limp mother sheep up across his back and
+shoulder. It seemed positively weird to be standing there acting a scene
+out of Genesis and mentioning Baskt, and I was about to say so when Pan
+started on ahead through the bushes and commanded me briefly to: "Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>At his heels I toiled along with the sheep babies hugged close to my breast
+until at last we deposited all three on a bed of fragrant hay in a corner
+of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"What'll I feed 'em?" I questioned anxiously. "There isn't a bit of any
+kind of food on this place but the ribs of a hog and a muffin and a cup of
+coffee."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll give her a quart of hot water with a few drops of this heart
+stimulant I have in my pocket, and she'll do the rest for the family as
+soon as she warms up. She's got plenty of milk and needs to have it drawn
+badly. There you are&mdash;go to it, youngsters. She is revived by just being
+out of the wind and in the warmth, and I don't believe she needs any
+medicine. She wouldn't let them to her udder if she wasn't all right. Now
+we can leave them alone for a time, and I'll give her a warm mash in a
+little while." As he spoke Adam calmly walked away from the interesting
+small family, which was just beginning a repast with great vigor, and
+paused at the feed-room door. With more pride than I had ever felt when
+entering a ball-room with a Voudaine gown upon me and a bunch of orchids, I
+followed and stood at his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how do you do, sweeties, and where did you get this model hen-house?
+Trap nests! I wouldn't have believed it of you!" said Adam to the Leghorn
+family and me inclusive.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't do it all," I faltered as I experienced a terrific temptation to
+lie silently and claim all of the affectionate praise that was beaming from
+Pan's eyes upon all of us, but I fought and conquered it with nobility.
+"Matthew Berry came out and did about&mdash;no, a little more than half of it.
+But I did all I could," I added, with a pathetic appeal for his
+approbation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, half of the job is more than the world could expect of the beautiful
+Ann Craddock, who sits in the front of Gale Beacon's box at the
+Metropolitan," answered Pan, with a little flute of laughter in his voice
+that matched the crimson crests which stood more rampant than ever across
+the tips of his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, where&mdash;who are you and&mdash;" I asked in astonishment as I followed him
+into the last of the sunset glow coming across the front of the barn.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>"I'm just Adam and I go many places," he answered with more of the
+intoxicating crooning laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Rufus says that red-headed Peckerwoods go to the devil on Fridays," I
+retorted to the raillery of the Pan laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>was</i> Friday and she didn't sing Delilah to my notion. Did she to
+yours?" he asked, this time with a smile that was even more interesting
+than the laugh. "Come over and sit with me by the spring-house and let's
+discuss grand opera while I eat my supper and wait until I think it is safe
+to give the ewe some mash.</p>
+
+<p>"I will if you'll invite me to the supper; I can't face another swine and
+muffin meal," I answered as I followed him down a path that led west from
+the barn-door.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got two apples and a double handful of black walnut kernels. The
+drinks from the spring are on you," he answered as he led me down through a
+thicket of slim trees that were sending out a queer fragrance to a huge old
+stone spring-house from which gushed a stream of water. "Just these two
+spring days are bringing out the locust buds almost before time. Smell
+'em!" he said as he looked up into the tops of the slim trees, which were
+showing a pink-green tinge of color in the red sunset rays.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," I said softly as I clasped my hands to my breast and breathed in
+deep, "I'm glad, glad I didn't have to let them sell it. I love it. I love
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sell it?" asked Adam as he brushed a rug of dry leaves from under the
+bushes upon one of the huge slabs of rock before the door of the
+spring-house for me to sit on, and took two apples from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I'll work both my fingers and toes to the bone before I'll give
+it up," I answered as I crouched down beside him on the leaves and began to
+munch at the apple, which he had polished on the sleeve of his soft, gray,
+flannel shirt before he handed it to me.</p>
+
+<p>While we dined on the two red apples, the tangy nuts, and a few hard
+crackers that, I think, were dog-biscuits, I told him all about it, up to
+my defiance and assumption of the management of Elmnest in the library
+after dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>can</i> keep us from starving until I learn chickens, can't I?" I asked
+after the recital, and I crouched a little closer to him on the rock, for
+black shadows were coming in between the trees and into my consciousness,
+and all the pink moonlight had faded as a rosy dream, leaving the world
+about us silver gray.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder just how much genuine land passion there is in the hearts of
+women?" said Adam, softly answering my question with another. "The duration
+of race life depends upon it really."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you are talking about, but I understand you," I answered
+him hotly. "Also I know that I love that old sheep more than you do, and
+I'm going to get in line with my egg-basket when the United States begins
+mustering in forces to fight, no matter what it is to be. I wish I could
+say it like I feel it to that Mr. Secretary Evan Baldwin, who forgets that
+women are the natural&mdash;the nutritive sex."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could," said kind Adam, with one of Pan's railing laughs.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't laugh at me&mdash;I'm getting born all over, and it is hard," I said with
+a sob in my throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me! I'm not really laughing&mdash;it's just a form&mdash;form of the
+Peckerwood's nature-worship," he answered as he took my hand in his warm
+one for a second. "Let's go finish up with old sheep mother," he added as
+he began to pad swiftly away up the path, drawing me after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I <i>am</i> growing inside," I assured myself as I for the second night
+fell asleep on the soft bosom of my family tradition of four posts.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most bromidic performances that human beings indulge in
+anywhere from their thirty-fifth to eightieth years is to sigh, look wise,
+and make this remark: "If I could only begin life over again, knowing what
+I do now!"</p>
+
+<p>I'm never going to be impressed by that again, and I'm going to answer
+straight out from the shoulder, "Well, it would be a great strain to you if
+you found yourself doing it."</p>
+
+<p>That was about what my entry into life at Elmnest, Riverfield, Harpeth,
+was, and in many places it rubbed and hurt my pride; in many places at many
+times it sapped my courage; in many ways it pruned and probed into my
+innermost being with a searching knife to see if I really did have any
+intelligence or soul, and at all times it left me with a feeling of just
+having been sprouted off the cosmic. I know what I mean, but it doesn't
+sound as if I did. This is the way most of it happened to me in my first
+six weeks of life in the rustic.</p>
+
+<p>How did I know that when you cleaned up a house that hadn't been cleaned
+up for about fifteen years you must wait for ten days after you came to
+that realization for a sunshiny day, and carry all the beds out in the yard
+before you began, and that no matter how much awful dust and cobwebs you
+swept and mopped out or how much old furniture you polished until it
+reflected your face, it was all perfectly futile unless the bed-sunning
+ceremony had been first observed? Just how were the ability to speak French
+in the most exclusive circles of Parisian society and a cultivated
+knowledge of every picture-gallery in the world going to keep me from
+making a blunder that would put me down in Mrs. Pennie Addcock's mind as a
+barbarian?</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mrs. Tillett and me have been getting ready all along to come and
+help you beat and sun the beds the first sunshiny day and then turn to with
+our buckets and mops and brooms. Now you've gone and done the wrong thing
+by all this polishing before a single bed had been beat and aired." As she
+spoke Mrs. Addcock surveyed my house, upon which I had spent every waking
+moment of my muscular strength, assisted by Polly Corn-tassel and sometimes
+Bud of the blue eyes, but not at all by Rufus, who resented the cleansing
+process to such an extent that he wrapped up his jaw in a piece of old
+flannel and retired to the hay-loft when Bud and Polly and I insisted on
+invading the horrors of his kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear Mrs. Addcock, won't you and Mrs. Tillett please forgive me for
+being so ignorant and help me do it to-day?" I pleaded as I picked up a
+small Tillett, who was peeping soft wooing at me from where he balanced
+himself on uncertain and chubby legs against his mother's skirts.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in this case there is just nothing else to do, but turn to on the
+beds now, wrong end first, but next year you'll know," she answered me with
+indulgent compromise in her voice. "And I guess we'll find some broom and
+mop work yet to be done. Come on, Mrs. Tillett. I guess Nancy can mind the
+baby all right while we work."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he ain't no trouble now except he wants to find out all about the
+world by tasting of it. Don't let him eat a worm or sech, and he'll be all
+right," answered the beaming young mother of the toddler. "And, Miss Nancy,
+I was jest going to tell you that I have got a nice pattern of a plain kind
+of work dress if you would like to use it," she added as she pointedly did
+not look at my peasant's smock that hung in such lovely long lines that I
+found myself pausing much too often before one of the mirrors in the big
+living-room to admire them. Mrs. Tillett's utility costume was of blue
+checked gingham and had no lines at all except top and bottom, with a belt
+in between. Both ladies wore huge gingham aprons, and I must say that they
+looked like the utility branch of the feminine species while I may have
+resembled the ornamental. But they were dear neighbors, and the Tillett
+baby and I had a very busy and happy day with the Golden Bird and his busy
+family while the two missionaries did over every bed in Elmnest, even
+invading the living-room and shaking out the cushions of the old couch in
+the very face of one of the charges of Xerxes' army. I put his babykins in
+a big feed-basket in a nest of hay, and the two lamb twins came and licked
+him every now and then by way of welcome into my barn nursery. The fine
+young sheep mother was now in blooming health, and the valuable progeny
+were growing by the hours, most of which they spent at the maternal fount,
+opposite each other and both small tails going like a new variety of
+speedometer.</p>
+
+<p>"I see mother ewe knows enough to hang around the lady of the barn and
+feed-bins. Those lambkins are two pounds heavier than any born within a
+week of them at Plunkett's," Pan had said not a week past, and both sheep
+mother and I had beamed with gratified pride at his commendation.</p>
+<p><a name="picture_3" id="picture_3"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illustr-03.jpg" width="500" height="413" alt="I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins
+came and welcomed him" title="" />
+<span class="caption">I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins
+came and welcomed him</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then while the renovation of the four-posters went on with a happy buzz, I
+busied myself in and out and about with the numberless details of care of
+the Bird family. My knowledge of music earned by many long hours in the
+practice of harmonics and a delighted and diligent attendance at the opera
+seasons of New York, Berlin, and Paris, to say nothing of Boston and
+London, had not, in my new life, in any way aided me to see that I had made
+a mistake in ordering a three-hundred-egg incubator to start building a
+prize flock with Mr. Golden Bird and the ten Ladies Leghorn, but in this
+case Adam had guided me from off that shoal, and by telegram I had changed
+the order for three fifty-egg improved metal mothers and the implements
+needed in accomplishing their maternal purpose. In one of them were now
+fifty beautiful white pearls that I could not refrain from visiting and
+regarding through the little window in the metallic side of the metallic
+mother at least several times an hour, though I knew that twice a day to
+regulate the heat and fill the lamp was sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe I'll be able to stand seeing them hop out," I remarked to
+Baby Tillett, the lambkins, and the good old red ally, who was patiently
+seated on a box over fifteen of the pearls. Adam had kept the poor old
+darling covering some white china eggs for nearly two weeks before he gave
+her the pearls on the same day we put the forty-five in the interior of her
+metal rival. I didn't at first understand his sinister purpose in thus
+holding her back until the metal rival could get an even start, but I did
+later.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you have a mighty good hatching, Nancy, but I have no faith in
+half-way measures, and a tin box is a half-way measure for a hen, just as
+cleaning house without bed-sunning is trifling," said Mrs. Addcock, with a
+final prod as she came out to the barn with Mrs. Tillett to reclaim Baby
+Tillett.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't married, Miss Nancy, and you won't understand how babies need
+mothers, even the chicken kind," said Mrs. Tillett, as she cuddled Baby
+Tillett gurglingly against her shoulder and followed in the wake of Mrs.
+Addcock with the mops and buckets down the walk and around the house.</p>
+
+<p>I stood beside the tin triumph of science, with my baby lambs licking at my
+hands, while Mrs. Ewe nuzzled for corn in one of my huge pockets, and a
+baby collie, which Pan had brought the week before, when her eyes were
+scarcely open, tumbled about my feet, and looked after the retreating
+women&mdash;and I did understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, I'll do the best I can by your&mdash;your progeny, Mr. G. Bird," I said
+as the great big, white old fellow came and pecked in my pocket for corn in
+perfect friendliness with Mrs. Ewe.</p>
+
+<p>I was called upon to keep my promise in less than a week. It might have
+been a tragedy if Bess Rutherford's practical sense had not helped save my
+affections from a panic. This is how it happened.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, chicken culture is a germ that spreads by contagion. I'm not at all
+surprised at your friends," Adam had answered when I had appealed to him to
+know if I could sell Bess Rutherford just six of the baby chicks, when they
+came out, for her to begin a brood in a new back-yard system, only Bess is
+so progressive that she is having a nice big place in the conservatory that
+opens out of her living-room cleared for them to run about out of their tin
+mother when they want to. She says she believes eternal vigilance is the
+price of success with poultry as the book she bought, which is different
+from mine, says, and Bess decided that she wanted her chickens where she
+could go in to see them comfortably when she came from parties and things
+without having to go around in the back yard, which is the most lovely
+garden in Hayesville anyway, in her slippers and party clothes. "I'd sell
+her the chicks at twenty dollars apiece, and that's cheap if they produce
+as they ought to with their blood and such&mdash;such care as she intends to
+bestow on them. The twenty-dollar price will either cure her or start an
+idle woman into a producer," said Adam, in answer to my request, as he cut
+me out a pair of shoes from a piece of hide like that which the shoes upon
+his own feet were made from. It was raining, and I sat at his feet in the
+barn and laboriously sewed what he had cut.</p>
+
+<p>I told Bess what Adam said, and she paid me the hundred and twenty dollars
+right on the spot, and then insisted on opening the incubator at the
+regular time for the ten minutes the book directs, to cool off the eggs
+night and morning, and putting her monogram on six of the eggs. To do this
+she decided to stay all night, and telephoned her maid, Annette, to pack
+her bag and let Matthew bring it out to her when he came to help Polly
+Corn-tassel put their first batch of eggs into their incubator. Matthew had
+bought twenty hens and two nice brotherly roosters, and they had almost
+caught up with me in the number of their brown babies on the whole shells.
+Matthew had been coming out night and morning ever since he had brought
+out his and the Beesleys' poultry and had either had supper with us at
+Elmnest or we had both got riz biscuits and peach preserves and chicken
+fried with Aunt Mary and Uncle Silas and Polly and Bud. I had subjugated
+Rufus into cooking a few canned things, for which I had traded one of his
+pig jaws at the bank-post-office-grocery emporium, and Uncle Silas had
+thrown in a few potatoes, and Adam had brought me a great bag of white
+beans from across Paradise Ridge, so the diet at Elmnest had changed
+slightly. The absorbed twins had never noticed it at all; only they
+displayed more hearty vigor in attacking the problems of literature and
+history that absorbed them. Also almost every day Pan brought me young
+green things that were sprouting in the woods, and I cooked them for him in
+an old iron pot down by the spring-house and had supper with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Those two dears are the most precious old Rips I ever beheld," said Bess
+when we had retired to my room after supper on the fateful night of our
+near tragedy. "You are so fortunate, Ann, to have two delicious fathers in
+name only. Mine pokes into my business at all angles and insists on so much
+attention from me that I don't know how I'll amount to anything in this
+world. He says it takes a very fine and brainy woman to earn about ten
+thousand dollars a year being affectionate and agreeable to her own father,
+and that I get so much because there is no possible competition as I am an
+only child, but all the same it looks like unearned money to me. Just wait
+until those six little chickens begin to earn me a hundred dollars a month
+like my book guarantees they will do in their second year; then I'm going
+to show dad just how much I love him for himself and give him back my
+bank-book."</p>
+
+<p>"Still it is an awful lot of work, Bess," I remonstrated feebly, because I
+knew that I couldn't have made myself believe all I had learned in just two
+months at Elmnest the day I started in business.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Ann, I told you about that wonderful Evan Baldwin who has been
+in Hayesville two or three times this winter, the man to whom the governor
+gave the portfolio of agriculture, I believe they call it. Well, he was at
+the Old Hickory ball the other night when you wouldn't come, and I told him
+all about you and about buying those little chickens from you, and he was
+so wonderful and sympathetic that Owen Murray sulked dreadfully. He
+encouraged me entirely and told me a lot of things about some of his
+experiment stations in all the different States. You thought you were going
+to stagger me with that twenty-dollar price on those chicks in shell, but
+he said he had paid as much as five hundred dollars apiece for a few eggs
+he got from some prize chickens in England and had brought them over in a
+basket in his own hand. He said he thought from what I told him about the
+Golden Bird that twenty would be about right for one of his sons or
+daughters. Ann, he is a perfectly delicious man, and you must meet him. It
+is awful the way all the girls and women just follow him in droves, though
+I'm sure he doesn't seem to notice us."</p>
+
+<p>"I never want to lay eyes on him, Bess. He has insulted me and I never&mdash;"
+but just here a thought struck me in my solar plexus and crinkled me
+entirely up. "Oh, Bess, I forgot to fill the lamp in the incubator
+to-night, and I believe the chicken eggs will be all chilled to death. What
+will I do? It is near midnight and it's&mdash;it's&mdash;c&mdash;cold."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get 'em quick and maybe we can resuscitate 'em. Don't you remember
+about reviving frozen people in that first-aid class we had just after the
+war broke out and we didn't know whether we were in it or not? Come on,
+quick!" Bess seized the quilt from the bed and descended into the back
+yard, clad only in her lingerie for sleeping, a silk robe-de-chambre and
+satin mules, while I followed, likewise garmented.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, how cold," wailed Bess as the frosty Spring air poured around us
+in our flight to the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"Put the quilt around you," I chattered.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to put all the egg chickens in it," she answered as we scuttled
+into the barn out of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"The lamp is out, but the eggs still feel warm to the hand," I said as I
+knelt in deep contrition beside the metal hen.</p>
+
+<p>"Fill it and light it, and they'll soon warm up," advised Bess.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no oil on the place. I forgot it," I again wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't there room under the hen here?" asked Bess, with the brilliant mind
+she inherited from Mr. Rutherford running over the speed limit, and as she
+spoke she felt under the old Red Ally, who only clucked good naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"It feels like she is covering a hundred now, and there's no room for
+more," said Bess, answering herself with almost a wail in her voice. "What
+will we do? The book says April-hatched chickens are the best, and these
+would have come out in just a few days."</p>
+
+<p>And then from somewhere in my heart, which had harbored the cuddle of the
+cold lamb babies against it, there rose a knowledge of first aid for the
+near-baby chickens.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bess," I exclaimed, "let's wrap the tray of eggs up in the quilt and
+take it up-stairs to bed with us. We are just as warm as the hen, and I'll
+get Rufus to go for Polly at daylight to fix the lamp while we stay in bed
+and huddle them until the incubator warms up, as it does in just an hour
+after it's lighted."</p>
+
+<p>"Ann, you are both maternal and intellectual," said Bess, with the deepest
+admiration in her voice. "Let's hurry or we'll never get warmed up
+ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>And in very much less time than could be imagined Bess Rutherford and I
+were in the middle of the four-poster, sunk deep into the feathers with the
+precious pearls of life carefully imbedded between us.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't joggle," Bess commanded as we got all settled and tucked in.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Tillett lets little Tillett sleep with her cold nights," I murmured
+drowsily.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it; no woman would undertake the responsibility of human
+life like that," Bess answered as she tucked in a loose end of cover under
+the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"Most of the world mothers sleep with their babies," Adam said when I told
+him about little Tillett, "and&mdash;" I was answering when I trailed off into a
+dream of walking a tight rope over a million white eggs. In the morning
+Bess said she had dreamed that she was a steam roller trying to make a road
+of eggs smooth enough to run her car over.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Also Bess and I woke to find ourselves heroines. Matthew came to breakfast
+after he had seen the lamps in his mock hens burning brightly, and brought
+Polly with him to congratulate us on the rescue of our infant industry.
+Polly had told him of our brilliant coup against old Jack Frost, and he was
+all enthusiasm, as was also Uncle Cradd, while father beamed because he was
+hearing me praised and thought of something else at the same time. Later
+Owen Murray came out for Bess in his car, and insisted on buying six more
+of the eggs, because, he said, they had now become a sporting proposition
+and interested him. Bess agreed to board them to maturity in her
+conservatory for him at fifty cents a day per head and let him visit them
+at any time. He gave me a check immediately. He offered to buy six of
+Polly's chicks at the same price, but Matthew refused to let her sell them
+at all, and also Bess refused to have any mixing of breeds in her
+conservatory. Polly didn't know enough to resent losing the hundred and
+twenty dollars, because she had never had more than fifty cents in her
+life, and Matthew didn't realize what it would have meant to her to have
+that much money, because he had more than he needed all his life, so they
+were all happy and laughed through one of Rufus' worst hog effusions in the
+way of a meal for lunchers, but&mdash;but I had in a month learned to understand
+what a dollar might mean to a man or woman, and at the thought of that two
+hundred and forty dollars Mr. G. Bird and family had earned for me in their
+second month of my ownership my courage arose and girded up its loins for
+the long road ahead. I knew enough to know that these returns were a kind
+of isolated nugget in the poultry business, and yet why not?</p>
+
+<p>"We'll sell Mr. Evan Baldwin a five-hundred-dollar gold egg yet, Mr. G.
+Bird," I said to myself.</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon they all departed and left me to my afternoon's work.
+Matthew lingered behind the others and helped me feed the old red ally and
+Mrs. Ewe and Peckerwood Pup.</p>
+
+<p>"I was talking to Evan Baldwin at the club after his first lecture the
+other night and, Ann, I believe I'll be recruited for the plow as well as
+for the machine-gun. I'm going to buy some land out there back of the
+Beesleys' and raise sheep on it. He says Harpeth is losing millions a year
+by not raising sheep. I'm going to live at Riverfield a lot of the time and
+motor back and forth to business. Truly, Ann, the land bug has bit me
+and&mdash;and it isn't just&mdash;just to come up on your blind side. But, dear, now
+don't you think that it would be nice for me to live over here with you as
+a perfectly sympathetic agricultural husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"I needed a husband so much more yesterday to help with the pruning of the
+rose-vines than I do to-day, Matthew," I answered with a laugh. Matthew's
+proposals of marriage are so regular and so alike that I have to avoid
+monotony in the wit of my answers.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm never in time to do a single thing on this place, and I don't see how
+everything gets done for you without my help. Who helps you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody," I answered. I had never had the courage to break Adam to
+Matthew in the long weeks I had been seeing them both every day, and of
+course Pan had never come out of the woods when Matthew or any of the rest
+were there. "I'll tell you what you can do for me," I said, with a sudden
+inspiration about getting rid of him, for the red-headed Peckerwood had
+promised to come and put some kind of hoodoo earth around the peonies and
+irises and pinks in my garden, also to bud some kind of a new rose on one
+of the old blush ones, and I wanted the place quiet so he would venture
+out of his lair. "You can go on to town and look after Polly carefully. She
+is going in with Bess for the first time since their infatuation, and I
+want her eyes to open gradually on the world out over Paradise Ridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Ann, ought they ever to open?" asked Matthew, suddenly, with the color
+coming up to the roots of his hair and burning in his ears like it still
+does in Bud Corn-tassel's when he comes over to see or help me or to bring
+me something from Aunt Mary, his mother. "Bess is one of the best of
+friends I've got in the world, but I just&mdash;just couldn't see Corn-tassel
+dancing in some man's arms in the mere hint of an evening gown that Bess
+occupied while fox-trotting with Evan Baldwin at the club the other night."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the belle of the ball, Matt?" I asked him, with a flame in my
+cheeks, for the pink and lavender chiffon gown Bess had worn was one of
+the Voudaine creations that I had brought from Paris and sold her after the
+crash.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bess always is when you are not there and, Ann, don't for a moment
+think that I&mdash;I&mdash;" Poor Matthew was stuttering while I rubbed the tip of my
+nose against his sleeve in the way of a caress, as I had a feed-bucket in
+one hand and a water-pan in the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Do go and shop with Polly and Bess as a force for protection. I must have
+a quiet afternoon to commune with my garden," I commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes you make me so mad, Ann Craddock, that&mdash;that&mdash;" Matthew was
+stuttering when Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door to chat with him, and
+I made my escape through the barn and out into the woods. I had thought
+that I saw a glint of Peckerwood red pass through the pasture that way, and
+I was determined that Pan shouldn't give me and the garden the slip as he
+always did when he saw anybody around.</p>
+
+<p>As I ran rapidly through the old pasture, which was overgrown with
+buckbushes and sassafras sprouts, which were turning into great pink and
+green fern clumps in the warm April sunshine, I gave the two or three
+Saint-Sa&euml;ns Delilah notes which had been robbed of any of their wicked
+Delilah flavor for me by having heard Mr. G. Bird sing them so beautifully
+on the stage of the Metropolitan in that first dream night in Elmnest. But
+I called and then called in vain until at last I came out to the huge old
+rock that juts out from the edge of the rugged little knoll at the far end
+of the pasture. Here I paused and looked down on Elmnest in the afternoon
+sunshine with what seemed to be suddenly newly opened eyes. I had been in
+and out of Elmnest to such an extent for the last six weeks that I hadn't
+had a chance to get off and look at it from an outsider's standpoint, and
+now suddenly I was taking that view of it. The old rose and green brick
+house, covered in by its wide, gray shingle roof, the gables and windows
+of which were beginning to be wreathed in feathery and pink young vines,
+which were given darker notes here and there in their masses by the sturdy
+green of the honey-suckles, hovered down on a small plateau rear-guarded by
+the barn and sheds, flanked by the garden and the gnarled old orchard, and
+from its front door the long avenue of elms led far down to the group of
+Riverfield houses that huddled at the other end. All villages in the State
+of Harpeth have been so built around the old "great houses" of the colonial
+landowners, and between their generations has been developed a communistic
+life that I somehow feel is to bridge from the pioneer life of this country
+to the great new life of the greater commune that is coming to us. Down
+there in Riverfield I knew that there was sin and sorrow and birth and
+death, but there was no starvation, and for every tragedy there was a
+neighbor to reach out a helping hand, and for every joy there were hearty
+and friendly rejoicings.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, and I'm one of them&mdash;I belong," I said to myself as I noted each
+cottage into which I went and came at will, as friend and beloved neighbor.
+Even at that distance I could see a small figure, which I knew to be Luella
+Spain, running up the long avenue, and in its hand I detected something
+that, I was sure, was a covered plate or dish. "And I'm making Elmnest
+fulfil its destiny into the future&mdash;into the future that the great Evan
+Baldwin is preaching about in town, instead of practicing out in the
+fields. I wonder if he really knows a single thing about farming."</p>
+
+<p>"He does," came an answer from right at my shoulder in Pan's flutiest
+voice, and I turned to find him standing just behind me on the very edge of
+the old tilting rock.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" I demanded of him as I took the clean white cloth tied
+up at four corners, gypsy-fashion, which he offered me and which, I could
+see, was fairly bursting with green leaves of a kind I had never seen
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"I was with him at the Metropolitan the night I saw Ann Craddock in Gale
+Beacon's box, you know,&mdash;the night that Mr. G. Bird sang 'Delilah,' and
+also I've slept on the bare ground with him in his woods in Michigan and on
+his red clay in Georgia."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hate him all the same for the insult of his offer to buy Elmnest,
+though I doubt if he has any family pride or any family either, so, of
+course, he wouldn't understand that it <i>is</i> an insult to offer to buy one's
+colonial home with holes in the door to shoot Indians through," I answered
+with the temper that always came at the mention of the name of a man I had
+chosen to consider a foe without any consent on his part at all.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd think he was born and raised in a hollow log if you should ever
+interview him, and he hasn't any family, but from some of the motions he is
+making, I think he intends to have," answered Pan, with one of his most
+fluty jeers, and he shook his head until the crests ruffled still lower
+over the tips of his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;you one of his agents&mdash;that is, <i>spies</i>, and was it you that
+insulted me by wanting to buy Elmnest just because it was poor and old?" I
+demanded, with the color in my cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not his spy or his agent, and do you want to come down to the
+spring-house and cook these wild-mustard shoots for our dinner, or shall I
+go at our old garden with the prospect of an empty stomach at sunset?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't you come in to dinner with me?" I asked, with a mollified laugh,
+though I knew I was bringing down upon myself about my hundredth refusal of
+proffered hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>"Two reasons&mdash;first, because I won't eat with my neighbors at the 'great
+house' when I can't eat with them in the cottage, and I just can't eat the
+grease that a lot of the poorer villagers deluge their food with. I'm Pan,
+and I live in the woods on roots and herbs. Second&mdash;because about six weeks
+ago I found a farm woman who would come out at my wooing to cook and eat
+the herbs and roots with me and I could have her to myself all alone. Now,
+will you come on down to the spring?" And without waiting for my reply,
+Adam started down the hill, crosswise from the path by which I had
+ascended, padding ahead in his weird leather sandals and breaking a path
+for me through the undergrowth as I followed close at his shoulder, an
+order of rough travel to which I had become accustomed in the weeks that
+had passed and that now seemed to me&mdash;well, I might say racial.</p>
+
+<p>In the riot of an April growing day, in which we could hear life fairly
+teem and buzz at our feet, on right, and left, and overhead, Adam and I
+worked shoulder to shoulder in the old garden of Elmnest. Every now and
+then I ran down to the spring to put a green fagot under the pot of herbs,
+which needed to simmer for hours to be as delicious as was possible for
+them. From the library came a rattle and bang of literary musketry from the
+blessed parental twins, who were for the time being with Julius C&aelig;sar in
+"all Gaul," and oblivious to anything in the twentieth century, even a
+spring-intoxicated niece and daughter down in her grandmother's garden with
+a Pan from the woods; occasionally Rufus rattled a pot or a pan; but save
+for these few echoes of civilization, Adam and I delved and spaded and
+clipped and pruned and planted in the old garden just as if it had been the
+plot of ground without the walls of Eden in which our first parents were
+forced to get busy.</p>
+
+<p>"Great work, Farmwoman," said Adam as we sat down on the side steps to eat,
+bite-about, the huge red apple he had taken from the bundle of emigrant
+appearance which he always carried over his shoulder on the end of a long
+hickory stick and which I had by investigation at different times found to
+contain everything from clean linen to Sanskrit poetry for father. To-day I
+found the manuscript score of a new opera by no less a person than Hurter
+himself, which he insisted on having me hum through with him while we ate
+the apple.</p>
+
+<p>"I told Hurter I thought that fourth movement wouldn't do, and now I know
+it after hearing you try it through an apple," said Pan as he rose from
+beside me, tied the manuscript up in the bandana bundle, and picked up his
+long pruning-knife. "Now, Woman, we'll put a curb on the rambling of every
+last rambler in this garden and then we can lay out the rows for Bud to
+plant with the snap beans to-morrow." Adam, from the first day he had met
+me, had addressed me simply with my generic class name, and I had found it
+a good one to which to make answer. Also Adam had shown me the profit and
+beauty of planting all needful vegetables mixed up with the flowers in the
+rich and loamy old garden, and had adjusted a cropping arrangement between
+the Corn-tassel Bud and me that was to be profitable to us both, Bud only
+doing in odd hours the work I couldn't do, and getting a share of the
+profits.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't work me to death to-day," I pleaded, and told him about the rescue
+of the babies Bird with so much dramatic force that his laughter rang out
+with such volume that old Rufus came to the kitchen window to look out and
+shake his head, and I knew he was muttering about "Peckerwoods," "devils,"
+and the sixth day of the week. "Will the chicks live all right, do you
+think?" I asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"They're safe if they never got cold to the touch and you didn't joggle 'em
+too much. Do either you or Miss Rutherford happen to er&mdash;er&mdash;kick in your
+sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"We do not!" I answered with dignity, as I snipped away a dead branch of
+ivy from across the path.</p>
+
+<p>"I just thought Miss Rutherford might from&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know Bess; she's so executive that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That she wouldn't kick eggs for anything," finished Pan, mockingly. "She
+does pretty well in the Russian ballet, doesn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish you could just see her in the 'Cloud Wisp'!" I exclaimed, with
+the greatest pride, for Bess Rutherford has nothing to envy Pavlova about.</p>
+
+<p>"I have&mdash;er&mdash;have a great desire to so behold her at some future time,"
+answered Pan, with one of his eery laughs, and I could almost see hoofs
+through the raw hide of his shoes. I would have ruffled the red crests off
+of the tips of his ears to see if they really were pointed if he had not
+stood just out of reach of my hand, where it would have been impossible to
+catch him if I tried.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't eat with me in civilization, you won't meet any of my friends,
+and I don't believe you ever want to please me," I said as I turned away
+from his provocation and began again with the scissors.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like world girls," he said with the fluty coo in his voice that
+always calms the Ladies Leghorn when they are ruffled. "I only love farm
+women. The moon is beginning to get a rise out of the setting sun, and
+let's go away from these haunts of men to our own woods home. Come along!"
+As he spoke Pan pocketed his long knife, picked up his stick and bundle,
+and began to pad away through the trees down towards the spring, with me at
+his shoulder, and for the first time he held my hand in his as I followed
+in my usual squaw style.</p>
+
+<p>In all the long dreary weeks that followed I was glad that I had had that
+dinner at sunset and moonrise with him down in the cove at the spring that
+was away from all the world. All during the days that never seemed to end,
+as I went upon my round of duties, I put the ache of the memories of it
+from me, but in the night I took the agony into my heart and cherished it.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's the Romney hand ye have with the herb-pot, Woman dear," said Adam
+as he squatted down beside our simmering pot and stirred it with the clean
+hickory stick I had barked for that purpose when, very shortly after high
+noon, I had put the greens, with the two wild onion sprigs and the handful
+of inevitable black-walnut kernels, into the iron pot set on the two rocks
+with their smoldering green fire between. "You know you'd rather be eating
+this dinner of sprouts and black bread with your poor Adam than&mdash;than
+dancing that 'Cloud Drift' in town with Matthew Berry&mdash;or Baldwin the
+enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered, as I knelt beside him and thrust in another slim stick
+and tasted the juice of the pot off the end. "But it would be hard to make
+Matthew believe it. I forgot to tell you that Matt is really going in for
+farming, thanks to the evil influence of your friend Evan Baldwin, who
+wouldn't know a farm if he met one on the road, a real farm, I mean. Poor
+Matt little knows the life of toil he is plotting for himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he coming to live at Elmnest?" asked Adam, in a voice of entire
+unconcern, as he took the black loaf from his gypsy pack and began to cut
+it up into hunks and lay it on the clean rock beside the pot.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not," I answered with an indignation that I could see no reason
+for.</p>
+
+<p>"Sooner or later, Woman, you'll have to take a mate," was the primitive
+statement that confronted me as I lifted the pot with the skirt of my
+blouse and poured the greens into two brown crockery bowls that Adam kept
+secreted with the pot on a ledge of the old spring-house.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a husky young farmer is the only kind of a man who need apply. I
+mean a born rustic. I couldn't risk an amateur with the farm after all
+you've taught me," I answered as we seated ourselves on the warm earth side
+by side and began to dip the hunks of black bread into our bowls and lift
+the delicious wilted leaves to our mouths with it, a mode of consumption it
+had taken Pan several attempts to teach me. Pan never talks when he eats,
+and he seems to browse food in a way that each time tempts me more and more
+to reach out my hand and lift one of the red crests to see about the points
+of his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to hear my invocation to my ultimate woman?" he asked as he
+set his bowl down after polishing it out with his last chunk of bread some
+minutes after I had so finished up mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it more imperative than the one you give me under my window before I
+have had less than a good half-night's sleep every morning?" I asked as I
+crushed a blade of meadow fern in my hands and inhaled its queer tang.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I await my beloved in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grain fields.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, woman!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In thy eyes is truth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy body must give food with<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweat of labor, and thy lips<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hold drink for love thirst.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am thy child.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am thy mate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Pan took my hand in his as he chanted, and held my fingers to his lips, and
+ended his chant with several weird, eery, crooning notes blown across his
+lips and through my fingers out into the moonlit shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel about you just as I do about one of Mrs. Ewe's lambkins," I
+whispered, with a queer answering laugh in my voice, which held and
+repeated the croon in his.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I am thy child.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am thy mate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, come!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>again chanted Pan, and it surely wasn't imagination that made me think that
+the red crests ruffled in the wind. The light in his eyes was unlike
+anything I had ever seen; it smouldered and flamed like the embers under
+the pot beside the rock. It drew me until the sleeve of my smock brushed
+his sleeve of gray flannel. His arms hovered, but didn't quite enclose me.</p>
+
+<p>"And the way I am going to feel about all the little chickens out of the
+incubator," I added slowly as if the admission was being drawn out of me.
+Still the arms hovered, the crests ruffled, and the eyes searched down
+into the depths of me, which had so lately been plowed and harrowed and
+sown with a new and productive flower.</p>
+
+<p>"And the old twin fathers," I added almost begrudgingly, as I cast him my
+last treasure.</p>
+
+<p>Then with a laugh that I know was a line-reproduction descended from the
+one that Adam gave when he first recognized Eve, Pan folded me into his
+arms, laid his red head on my breast, and held up his lips to mine with a
+"love-thirst" that it took me more than a long minute to slack to the point
+of words.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew there was one earth woman due to develop at the first decade of
+this century, and I've found her," Pan fluted softly as he in turn took me
+on his breast and pressed his russet cheek against the tan of mine. "I'm
+going to take her off into the woods and then in a generation salvation for
+the nation will come forth from the forest."</p>
+
+<p>"My word is given to the Golden Bird to see his progeny safe into the
+world, and I must do that before&mdash;" but my words ended in a laugh as I
+slipped out of Pan's arms and sprang to my feet and away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll keep that faith with Mr. Bird to-night, and then I can take you with
+me before daylight," said Pan as he collected his Romney bundle with his
+left hand and me with his right and began to pad up the path from the
+spring-house towards the barn under a shower of the white locust-blossoms,
+which were giving forth their last breath of perfume in a gorgeous volume.</p>
+
+<p>"To-night?" I asked from the hollow between his breast and his arm where I
+was fitted and held steadily so that my steps seemed to be his steps and
+the breath of my lungs to come from his.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; most of the eggs were pipped when I went in the barn to put away the
+tools," answered Adam, with very much less excitement than the occasion
+called for.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why&mdash;why didn't you tell me?" I demanded as I came out of the first
+half of a kiss and before I retired into the last half.</p>
+
+<p>"Too hungry&mdash;had to be fed before they got to eating at your heart,"
+answered Pan in a way that made me know that he meant me and not the
+dandelion greens and brown bread.</p>
+
+<p>"You are joking me; they are not due until day after to-morrow," I said as
+I took my lips away and began to hurry us both towards the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"All April hatches are from two to three days early," was Adam's prosaic
+and instructive answer that cut the last kiss short as we entered the
+barn-door.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Quickly I released myself from his arm and flew to kneel in front of the
+metal mother, with the electric torch aimed directly into the little window
+that revealed all her inmost processes. The Peckerwood Pan hovered just at
+my shoulder, and together we beheld what was to me the most wonderful
+phenomenon of nature that had ever come my way. No sunset from Pike's Peak
+or high note from the throat of Caruso could equal it in my estimation.
+Behold, the first baby Bird stepped forth into the world right before my
+astonished and enraptured eyes! It was in this manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, right here next to the glass," said Adam, as he put his finger
+against the lower left-hand corner of the peep window, and there I directed
+my torch. One of the great white pearls had a series of little holes around
+one end of it, and while I gazed a sharp little beak was thrust suddenly
+from within it. The shell fell apart, and out stepped the first small
+Leghorn Bird with an assurance that had an undoubted resemblance to that of
+his masculine parent. For a moment he blinked and balanced; then he
+stretched his small wings and shook himself, an operation that seemed to
+fluff about fifty per cent. of the moist aspect from his plump little body,
+and then he deliberately turned and looked into my wide-opened eyes. I
+promptly gasped and sat down on the barn floor, with my head weakly cuddled
+against Adam's knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Two more here on the right-hand side, Woman," said Adam, as he knelt
+beside me, took the torch, supported me in my reaction of astonishment, and
+showed me where a perfect little batch of babies was being born. "Whew,
+Farmer Craddock, but those are fine chickens! Heaven help us, but they are
+all exploding at one time! Only eggs of one hundred per cent. vigor and
+fertility hatch that way. Look at the moisture gathering on the glass. If
+you put your hand in there you would find it about a hundred and ten."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look! G. Bird Junior, the first, is almost dry. Please, please let me
+take him in my hand!" I exclaimed as that five-minute-old baby pressed
+close up against the glass and blinked at the light and us bewitchingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't open the door for at least twelve hours now. Come away before
+the temptation overcomes you," commanded Pan.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait twelve hours to take that fluff-ball in my hands? Adam, you are
+cruel," I said, as he pocketed the torch and left the drama of birth dark
+and without footlights. As he padded away towards the moonlit barn-door, I
+followed him in reluctant protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that tall pine outlined against the sky over there on Paradise
+Ridge, Woman?" asked Adam, with the Pan lights and laugh coming back into
+his farmer eyes and voice. "I have got to be there an hour before dawn,
+and it is fifteen good miles or more. I want to roll against a log
+somewhere and sleep a bit, and it is now after ten o'clock. Go get your
+bundle, and I'll hang it on my stick, and we will disappear into the forest
+forever. I know a hermit who'll put us in marriage bonds. Come!" As he held
+out his arms Adam began to chant the weird tune to that mate song of his
+own invention.</p>
+
+<p>"You know I can't do that," I said as I went into his embrace and drank the
+chant down into my heart. "There are so many live things that I must stay
+to watch over. I&mdash;I'm their&mdash;mother as well as&mdash;as yours. They must be
+fed."</p>
+
+<p>"God, there really is such a thing as a woman," said Adam as he hid his
+smouldering eyes against my lips. "You'll be waiting when I come back, and
+you'll go with me the minute I call, if it's day or night? You'll be ready
+with your bundle?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean at daylight to-morrow, do you, Pan, dear?" I asked, with
+one of the last laughs that my heart was to know, for sometimes, it seemed
+forever, rippling out past his crimson crests.</p>
+
+<p>"No; listen to me, Woman," said Adam, as he held me tenderly on his right
+arm and took both my hands in his and held them pressed hard against my
+breast. "I am going away to-night, and I don't know when I can get back. I
+only knew to-day I'd have to go; that's why I&mdash;I took you and put my brand
+on your heart to-night. I can leave you aloose in the forest and know that
+I'll find you mine when I can come back. But, oh, come with me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't be your earth woman, Adam, if I left all these helpless things.
+I'll wait for you, and no matter when you come I'll be ready. Only, only
+you'll never take me quite away from them all, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I'll build a nest over there in the big woods, and you can go back and
+forth between my&mdash;my brood and Mr. G. Bird's," promised Adam with Pan's
+fluty laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Branded, and I don't even know the initials on the brand," I said to
+myself as I stood on the front steps under a honeysuckle vine that was
+twining with a musky rose in a death struggle as to the strength of their
+perfumes, and watched Adam go padding swiftly and silently away from me
+down the long avenue of elms. A mocking-bird in a tree over by the fence
+was pouring out showers of notes of liquid love, and ringdoves cooed and
+softly nestled up under the eaves above my head. "I'm a woman and I've
+found my mate. I am going to be part of it all," I said to myself as I sank
+to the step and began to brood with the night around me.</p>
+
+<p>I think that God gives it sometimes to a woman to have a night in which she
+sits alone brooding her love until somehow it waxes so strong and brave
+that it can face death by starvation and cold and betrayal and still live
+triumphant. It is so that He recreates His children.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, of course, Ann, everybody admires your pluck about this retiring from
+the world and becoming a model rustic, but it does seem to me that you
+might admit that some of your old friends have at least a part of the
+attraction for you that is vested in, well, say old Mrs. Red Ally, for
+instance. Will you or will you not come in to dine and to wine and to dance
+at the country club with Matthew Saturday evening?" Bess delivered herself
+of the text of her mission to me before she descended from her cherry
+roadster in front of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Bess, just come and see old Mrs. Red and never, never ask me to feel
+about a mere friend of my childhood like I do about her," I answered with
+welcome and excitement both in my voice. "Do come quick and look!"</p>
+
+<p>"Coming," answered Bess, with delightful enthusiasm and no wounded pride,
+as she left the car in one motion and swept into the barn with me in about
+two more.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, just look at that," I said as I opened the top of the long box that
+is called a brooder and is supposed to supplement the functions of the
+metal incubator mother in the destiny of chicken young. It has feed and
+water-pans in it, straw upon the floor as a carpet, and behind flannel
+porti&egrave;res is supposed to burn a lamp with mother ardor sufficient to keep
+the small fledglings warm, though orphaned. Did the week-old babies Leghorn
+have to be content with such mechanical mothering? Not at all! Right in the
+middle of the brooder sat the old Red Ally, and her huge red wings were
+stretched out to cover about twenty-five of the metal-born babies and part
+of her own fifteen, and spread in a close, but fluffy, circle around her
+were the rest of her adopted family all cosily asleep and happy at heart.
+"I left the top of the brooder open while I went for water the second day
+after hers and the incubator's had hatched, and when I came back she was
+just as you see her now, in possession of the entire orphan-asylum."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look, she's putting some out from under her and taking others in. Oh,
+Ann!" exclaimed Bess as she dropped on her knees beside the long box.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she changes them like that. I've seen her do it," I answered, with my
+cheeks as pink with excitement as were those of my sympathetic friend,
+Elizabeth Rutherford. "And you ought to see her take them all out for a
+walk across the grass. They all peep and follow, and she clucks and
+scratches impartially."</p>
+
+<p>"Ann," said Bess, with a great solemnity in the dark eyes that she raised
+to mine, "I suppose I ought to marry Owen <i>this</i> June. I want to have
+another winter of good times, but I&mdash;I'm ashamed to look this hen in the
+face."</p>
+
+<p>"Owen is perfectly lovely," I answered her, which was a very safely
+noncommittal answer in the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>"He carries one of the chickens he bought from you in his pocket all the
+time, with all necessary food, and it is much larger than any of mine or
+his in my conservatory. Owen is the one who goes in to tend to them when
+he brings me home from parties and things and&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Matthew took off all of his and Polly's little Reds yesterday, and I've
+never seen him so&mdash;so&mdash;" I paused for a word to express the tenderness that
+was in dear old Matt's face as he put the little tan fluff-balls one at a
+time into Polly Corn-tassel's outstretched skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"Matthew is a wonder, Ann, and you've got to come to this dance he is
+giving Corn-tassel Saturday&mdash;all for love of you because you asked him to
+look after her. He is the sweetest thing to her&mdash;just like old Mrs. Red
+here, spreads his wings and fusses if any man who isn't a lineal descendant
+of Sir Galahad comes near her. He's going to be awfully hurt if you don't
+come."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll tear myself away from my family and come, though I truly can't
+see that I wished Polly Corn-tassel upon all of you. You are just as crazy
+about the apple-blossom darling as I am, you specially, Bess Rutherford,"
+I answered, with pleased indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ann, I do wish you could have seen her in that frilled white thing with
+the two huge blue bows at the ends of the long plaits at my dinner-dance
+the other night, standing and looking at everybody with all the fascination
+and coquetry of&mdash;of&mdash;well, that little Golden Bird peeping at us from the
+left-hand corner of Mrs. Red Ally's right wing. Where <i>did</i> she get that
+frock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose that a woman who runs a farm dairy of fifty cows, while her
+husband banks and post-offices and groceries would be at all routed by a
+few yards of lace and muslin and a current copy of 'The Woman's Review'?
+Aunt Mary made that dress between sun-up and -down and worked out fifty
+pounds of butter as well," I answered, with a glow of class pride in my
+rustic breast.</p>
+
+<p>"All of that is what is seething in my blood until I can't stand it," said
+Bess as we walked towards the barn-door. "The reason I just feel like
+devouring Polly Corn-tassel is that somehow she seems to taste like bread
+and butter to me; I'm tired of life served with mayonnaise dressing with
+tabasco and caviar in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a Romney herb-pot is better," I said, as a strange chant began to
+play itself on my heartstrings with me alone for a breathless audience.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you come in on Saturday you can&mdash;" Bess was saying in a positive
+tone that admitted of no retreat, when Matthew's huge blue car came around
+the drive from the front of Elmnest and stopped by Bess's roadster. On the
+front seat sat Matthew, and Corn-tassel was beside him, but the rest of the
+car was piled high with huge sacks of grain, which looked extremely
+sensible and out of place in the handsomest car in the Harpeth Valley.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Ann, Mr. Matthew and I found the greatest bargain in winter
+wheat, and the man opened every sack and let me run my arm to the elbow in
+it. It is all hard and not short in a single grain. We are going to trade
+you half." And Polly's blue eyes, which still looked like the
+uncommercialized violet despite a six weeks' acquaintance with society in
+Hayesville, danced with true farmer delight.</p>
+
+<p>"It's warranted to make 'em lay in night shifts, Ann," said Matthew as he
+beamed down upon me with a delight equal to Polly's, and somehow equally as
+young. "Where'll I put it? In the feed-room in the bins?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and they are almost empty. I was wondering what I would do next for
+food, because I owe Rufus and the hogs so much," I answered gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you pay?" asked Bess, in a business-like tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a dollar and a quarter a bushel, all seed grade," answered Matthew,
+with the greatest nonchalance, as if he had known the grades of wheat from
+his earliest infancy.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Owen bought two bags of it for our joint family and paid such a
+fortune for it that I forgot the figures immediately; but I took up the
+rug and put it all in my dressing-room to watch over, lest thieves break
+into the garage and steal. Also I made him send me plebeian carnations
+instead of violets for Belle Proctor's dinner Tuesday," said Bess, with
+covetousness in her eyes as she watched Matthew begin to unload his wheat.
+I wonder what Matthew's man, Hickson, at one twenty-five a month, thought
+of his master's coat when he began to brush the chaff out of its London
+nap.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Owen Murray is just a town-bred duffer," said Matthew, as he
+shouldered his last sack of grain.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you are vastly mistaken if you think that&mdash;" Bess was beginning to
+say in a manner that I knew from long experience would bring on a war of
+words between her and Matthew when a large and cheerful interruption in the
+shape and person of Aunt Mary Corn-tassel came around the corner of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, what sort of city farming is going on to-day amongst all
+these stylish folks?" she asked as she skirted the two cars at what she
+considered a safe and respectful distance, and handed me a bunch of sweet
+clover-pinks with a spring perfume that made me think of the breath of Pan
+O'Woods as I buried my lips in them. "You, Polly, go right home and take
+off that linen dress, get into a gingham apron, and begin to help Bud milk.
+I believe in gavots at parties only if they strengthen muscles for milking
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"May I wait and ride down with Mr. Matthew and show him where to put our
+wheat, Mother?" asked Polly as she snuggled up to her mother, who was
+pinning a stray pink into Matthew's button-hole per his request.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if he'll put his legs under old Mrs. Butter to help you get done
+before I am ready to strain up," answered Aunt Mary, with a merry twinkle
+in her eye as she regarded Matthew in his purple and fine linen. "Put an
+apron on him," she added.</p>
+
+<p>"Lead me to the apron," said Matthew, with real and not mock heroics.</p>
+
+<p>"But before you go I want to tell all of you about an invitation that has
+come over the telephone in the bank to all of Riverfield, and make a
+consultation about it. Now who do you suppose gave it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" we all asked in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody less than the governor of the State called up Silas, me answering
+for him on account of his deafness, and asked everybody to come in to town
+next Saturday night to hear this new commissioner of agriculture that he is
+going to appoint make the opening address of his office, I reckon you could
+call it. You know Silas is the leading Democrat of this district, and the
+governor has opened riz biscuits with me many a time. I told him 'Thank
+you, sir,' we would all come and hear the young man talk about what he
+didn't know, and he laughed and rang off. Yes, we are all going in a kind
+of caravan of vehicles, and I want you to go, Nancy, in the family coach
+and take Mrs. Tillett with you on account of her having to take all the
+seven little Tilletts, because there won't be a minder woman left to look
+after 'em. Bud will drive so as not to disturb Cradd or William in their
+Heathen pursuits or discommode Rufus' disposition. Now, won't it be nice
+for the whole town to go junketing in like that?" As she spoke Aunt Mary
+beamed upon us all with pure delight.</p>
+
+<p>"But Saturday evening is the night that Mr. Matthew is going to have that
+dance for me, Mother," said Polly, with the violets becoming slightly
+sprinkled underneath the long black lashes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dancing can wait a spell," answered Aunt Mary, comfortably. "The
+governor said that all the folks at Cloverbend and Providence and Hillsboro
+are going, and Riverfield has got to shake out a forefoot in the trip and
+not a hind one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll have the dance next week, Corn-tassel," promised Matthew,
+promptly enough to prevent the drenching of the violets. "It will be great
+to hear Baldwin accept his portfolio, as it were."</p>
+
+<p>"And after his term begins I suppose he'll have offices at the capitol and
+will be in town most of the time. Then we can have him at all the dances.
+Polly, he dances like nothing earthly. Still Matthew won't let him come
+near you; he's deadly to women. We are all positively drugged by him,"
+exclaimed Bess, delighted at the idea of Hayesville society acquiring the
+new commissioner of agriculture for a permanent light.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I can count on you to help Mrs. Tillett and the children in and out,
+Nancy?" continued Aunt Mary, with the light of such generalship in her eye
+that I was afraid even to mention my one-sided feud with the hero of the
+hour. "You can take Baby Tillett and sit a little way apart from her so she
+won't have to feed him all the time to keep him quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"I can take eight people in my car, Mother Corn-tassel," said Matthew,
+with the most beautiful eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"I can get in five," added Bess, with an equal eagerness. "Can I have the
+Addcocks?" Bess and the pessimistic Mrs. Addcock had got together over some
+medicine to prevent pip in the conservatory young Leghorns.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and Matthew can take all the eight Spains if I can sit down Mrs.
+Spain to a bolt of gingham in time to get them all nicely covered for such
+a company," decreed the general, as she ran over in her mind's eye the rest
+of the population of Riverfield. "I'll make all the men hitch their best
+teams to the different rigs, and by starting early and taking both dinner
+and supper on the way we can get there in plenty of time. Twenty miles is
+not more than a half day's trip."</p>
+
+<p>"I can sit by you and hold two Spains in my lap," I heard Polly plan with
+Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure you can," he answered her. "I think the loveliest thing about
+Matthew Berry is the way he speaks to women and children." As he answered,
+he piled Aunt Mary and Polly in beside the rest of the wheat-bags and
+motored them away down the avenue.</p>
+
+<p>"Ann, please come to town with me," pleaded Bess as she got into her car
+and prepared to follow in the wake of the wheat-bags. "I miss you so, and
+Belle weeps at the mention of you. She and I are having dinner at the Old
+Hickory Club with Houston Jeffries and Owen to-night. Matt will come, and
+let's have one good old time. I came all this way to get you."</p>
+
+<p>"I honestly, honestly can't, Bess," I said as I took her hand stretched
+down from her seat behind the wheel to me, and put my cheek against it.
+"I've got this whole farm to feed between now and night. Both incubators
+must have their supper of oil or <i>you</i> know what'll happen. Mrs. Ewe and
+family must be fed, or rather she must be fed so as to pass it along at
+about breakfast time, I should say, not being wise in biology or natural
+history; the entire Bird family are invited to supper with me, and I even
+have to carry a repast of corn over the meadows to my pet abhorrences,
+Rufus' swine, because he has retired to the hay-loft with a flannel rag
+around his head, which means I have offended him or that father has given
+him an extra absent-minded drink from the decanter that Matthew brought
+him. Peckerwood Pup is at this moment, you see, chewing the strings out of
+my shoes as an appetizer for her supper. How could I eat sweetbreads and
+truffle, which I know Owen has already ordered, when I knew that more than
+a hundred small children were at home crying for bread?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ann, what is it that makes you so perfectly radiantly beautiful in that
+faded linen smock and old corduroy skirt? Of course, you always were
+beautiful, but now you look like&mdash;like&mdash;well, I don't know whether it is a
+song I have heard or a picture I have seen." Bess leaned down and laid her
+cheek against mine for a second.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to tell you some day before long," I whispered as I kissed the
+corner of her lips. "Now do take the twin fathers for a little spin up the
+road and make them walk back from the gate. They have been suffering with
+the Trojan warriors all day, and I know they must have exercise. Uncle
+Cradd walks down for the mail each day, but father remains stationary. Your
+method with them is perfect. Go take them while I supper and bed down the
+farm."</p>
+
+<p>"I know now the picture is by Tintoretto, and it's some place in Rome,"
+Bess called back over her shoulder as she drove her car slowly around to
+the front door to begin her conquest and deportation of my precious
+ancients.</p>
+
+<p>"Not painted by Tintoretto, but by the pagan Pan," I said to myself as I
+turned into the barn door.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>When I came out with a bucket of the new wheat in my hand, I heard Bess and
+her car departing, with Uncle Cradd's sonorous speech mingling with the
+puff of the engine.</p>
+
+<p>"We are all alone, Mr. G. Bird, and we love it, because then we can talk
+comfortably about our Mr. Adam," I said to the Golden Bird as he followed
+me around the side of the barn where a door had been cut by Pan himself to
+make an entry into my improvised chicken-house.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I was answered by a very interesting chuckling and clucking, and I
+turned to see what had disengaged the attention of Mr. G. Bird from me and
+my feed-bucket. The sight that met my eyes lifted the shadow that had lain
+between the Golden Bird and me since the morning I had taken him in to see
+his newly arrived progeny and had not been able to make him notice their
+existence. Stretching out behind me was a trail of wheat that had dripped
+from a hole in the side of the bucket, and along the sides of it the
+paternal Bird was marshaling his reliable foster-mother, Mrs. Red Ally's
+and all his own fluffy white progeny. With exceeding generosity he was not
+eating a grain himself, but scratching and chortling encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you were not like other chicken men, Mr. G. Bird, 'male indifferent
+to hatches,' as the book said," I exclaimed as he caught up with me and
+began to peck the grains I offered from my hand. "You are just like Owen
+and Matthew and Mr. Tillett and&mdash;and&mdash;" but I didn't continue the
+conversation because the chant began rending my heartstrings again. "Oh,
+Mr. G. Bird, it is an awful thing for a woman to have an apple orchard and
+lilac bushes in bloom when she is alone," I sighed instead, as I went on
+to my round of feeding, very hungry myself for&mdash;a pot of herbs. Later I,
+too, was fed.</p>
+
+<p>Long after the twin fathers had had supper and were settled safely by their
+candles, which were beacons that led them back into past ages, I sat by
+myself on the front doorstep in the perfumed darkness that was only faintly
+lit by stars that seemed so near the earth that they were like flowers of
+light blossoming on the twigs of the roof elms. In a lovely dream I had
+just gone into the arms of Pan when I heard out beyond the orchard a soft
+moo of a cow, and with it came a weak little calf echo.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody's cow has strayed&mdash;I wish she belonged to me and could help me
+with this nutrition job," I said to myself as I rose and ran down under the
+branches of the gnarled old apple-trees, which sifted down perfumed blow
+upon my head as I ran. Then I stopped and listened again. Over the old
+stone wall that separated the orchard from the pasture I heard footsteps
+and soft panting, also a weak little cow-baby protest of fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get over the wall and see if there is any trouble with them," I said
+and I suited my actions to my words. I suppose in the dark I forgot that
+cows have horns and that I had never even been introduced to one before,
+for with the greatest confidence and sympathy I walked up near the large
+black mass that was the cow mother, with a very small and wavering body
+pressed close at her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you call me, Mother Cow?" I asked softly.</p>
+
+<p>The question was taken from my lips as Pan came out of the darkness behind
+her and took me into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she called you. I didn't think I'd see you. I was just going to leave
+her for you and go my way; but trust women for secret communication," he
+said as my arm slipped around his bare throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Not see me?" I questioned.</p>
+
+<p>"I never wanted to see you again until I came for you, Woman. I didn't
+think I could stand it&mdash;to put you out of my arms again. I can't take you
+with me to-night. I came miles out of my way to bring her to you, and I've
+hurried them both cruelly. The calf is only two days old, but you do need
+her badly to feed the chickens. Milk-fed chickens show a gain of thirty per
+cent. over others. You can churn and get all the butter you need and feed
+them the buttermilk."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose I can learn to milk and churn her?" I asked as I shrank a
+bit closer in his arms from this new responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>"Milk her and churn the milk," laughed Pan as he bent my head forward on
+his arm, set his teeth in the back of my neck, and shook me like Peckerwood
+Pup shakes the gray kitten when I'm not looking.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you show me in the morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Woman, I have to run ten miles through the forest before daybreak, and I
+don't know when I can come back to you. I know I ought to tell you things,
+but I&mdash;I just can't. I demand of life that I be allowed to come for you and
+take you into the woods with only your Romney bundle. Will you be here
+ready for me when I come, and keep the bundle tied up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered as I drew his head down and pressed it to my breast,
+hoping that he might hear the chant on my heartstrings. I think he did
+hear.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I am thy child.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am thy mate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Come!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>he made response, as he slipped from my arms and away into the darkness,
+leaving me alone with only the mother now for company. She licked my arm
+with a warm, rough tongue, and I came back into my own body and led her to
+the barn and supper.</p>
+
+<p>There are two kinds of love, the cultivated kind that bores into a woman's
+heart through silk and laces in a hot-house atmosphere and brings about
+all kinds of enervating reactions until operated upon by marriage; the
+other kind a field woman breathes into her lungs and it gets into her
+circulation and starts up the most awful and productive activity. I've had
+both kinds. I moped for months over Gale Beacon, and made him and Matthew
+and father completely unhappy, lost ten pounds, and was sent to a rest-cure
+for temper. The next morning after Adam gave me the cow and calf and
+passionate embraces out in the orchard I began to work like six women, and
+what I did to Elmnest not ten women could have accomplished in as many
+days.</p>
+
+<p>I weeded the whole garden and I picked three bushels of our first peas,
+tied up sixty bunches of very young beets with long, tough orchard grass,
+treated fifty bunches of slender onions the same way, half a dozen of each
+to the bunch, and helped Bud Corn-tassel load a two-horse wagon with them
+and everything eatable he could get out of Aunt Mary's garden. Then I got
+up at two o'clock in the night and fed the mules so Bud could start at
+half-past two in order to be in the market at Hayesville long before the
+break of day, so as to sell the truck at the very top of the market to the
+earliest greengrocers. I gave Bud coffee and bread and butter and drove the
+team down to the gate while he went ahead to open it. I stood up while I
+drove, too, because Bud had not had room to put a seat in for himself and
+expected to stand up all the way to town. Talk about Mordkin and Pavlova!
+To stand up and drive a team hitched to a jolt-wagon over boulders and
+roots requires leg muscles! I hope I will be able to restrain myself from
+driving the team into market some day, but I am not sure I can. With the
+eggs and the "truck" Bud brought back sixteen dollars, eleven of which were
+mine. I bought a peck of green peas for myself from myself and ate most of
+them for dinner by way of blowing in some of the money. Then the chant on
+my heartstrings speeded me up to white-washing all the chicken
+paraphernalia on the place, and I dropped corn behind Rufus' plow for a
+whole day, even if it was to produce food for the swine. I went to bed at
+night literally on time with the chickens. I could only stay awake to kneel
+and reach out the arms of prayer and enfold Pan to my heart for a very few
+seconds before I vaulted into the four-poster and tumbled into the depths
+of sleep.</p>
+
+<p>My activities were not in any way limited by the stone walls that surround
+Elmnest, but they spread over entire Riverfield, which had very nearly quit
+the pursuit of agriculture and gone madly into a social adventure.
+Everybody was getting ready for the trip into the capital city to answer
+the governor's invitation, and clothing of every color, texture, and sex
+was being manufactured by the bolt. For every garment manufactured I was
+sponsor.</p>
+
+<p>"I sure am glad you have come down, Nancy," said Mrs. Addcock, with almost
+a moan; "that Mamie there won't let me turn up the hem of her dress without
+you, though I say what is a hem to a woman who has set in six pairs of
+sleeves since day before yesterday!"</p>
+
+<p>"I want shoe-tops and Ma wants ankles," sniffed Mamie Addcock. "Polly
+Beesley wears shoe-tops and she's seventeen and goes to the city to dance.
+And Miss Bess' and yours are shoe-tops, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you see what it is to raise a child to be led into sin and vanity,"
+said Mrs. Addcock, looking at me reproachfully from her seat upon the floor
+at the feet of the worldly Mamie.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll turn up the hem just right, Mrs. Addcock, while you get the collars
+on little Sammie's and Willie's shirts," I said soothingly as I sank down
+beside her at Mamie's feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I had to cut Sammie's shirt with a tail to tuck in, all on account of that
+Mr. Matthew Berry's telling him that shirt and pants ought to do business
+together. And there's Willie's jeans pants got to have pockets for the
+knife that Mr. Owen gave him. I just can't keep up with these city notions
+of my children with five of 'em and a weak back." As she grumbled Mrs.
+Addcock rose slowly from her lowly position to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make Willie's trousers, Mrs. Addcock, this afternoon, if he'll come
+and help me feed and bed everything at Elmnest," I offered, with my mouth
+full of pins.</p>
+
+<p>"No, child, but thank you for your willing heart. Mrs. Spain told me how
+you made Ezra's pants so one leg of him came while the other went, and I
+guess a mother is the only one to get the legs of her own offspring to
+match. I'll work it out myself now that Miss Mamie is attended to."</p>
+
+<p>"But now I know how to trouser boys normally. I turned Joe Tillett out in
+perfect proportion as well as in strong jeans," I answered, without the
+least offense at finding my first efforts as a tailor thus becoming the
+subject of kindly village gossip.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hope this junket will turn out as Mary Beesley expects, with
+enjoyment for everybody. However, I'm going to risk my back with Mr.
+Silas' mules rather than with that Bessie Rutherford's wheels that are not
+critter-drawn. I only hope she don't spill all my children, that I've had
+such a time getting here on earth, back into Kingdom Come."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you rather go in my carriage with Mrs. Tillett, and let me go with
+Bess to hold in the children?" I asked with unconcealed eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't believe so," answered Mrs. Addcock, cannily. "Sallie Tillett
+is having her dress made buttoned up in the back, and she has been in the
+habit of feeding the baby whenever he cries for it, though he can 'most
+stand alone. She is going to depend on you and a bag of biscuit to manage
+him through the show, and I'd rather not take your place."</p>
+
+<p>"No; perhaps you would enjoy it more behind Uncle Silas and the mules," I
+answered cheerily, feeling perfectly capable of handling Baby Tillett and
+his bag of biscuits, because the memory of the times his little head with
+its tow fuzz had cuddled down on my linen smock, when I had carried him
+back and forth for long visits in the barn to the Peckerwood Pup so his
+mother could have a little vacation from his society, accelerated the
+movement of the chant on the cardiac instrument in my breast. "He stays
+hours and hours with me in a basket in the barn and is perfectly satisfied
+with the biscuits."</p>
+
+<p>"All the same I told Sallie I could make that dress by another pattern, and
+you'd better sit with him a good distance during the show," said Mrs.
+Addcock, as I finished shoe-topping Mamie and picked up my pink-lined white
+sunbonnet, which had been a present from Mrs. Addcock herself and was
+astonishingly frilly and coquettish emanating from such a source, and began
+to depart.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take him on the other side of the auditorium," I answered, with
+respect for advice that I knew must be good through experience.</p>
+
+<p>And thus that pink and white, cooing, obstreperously hungry baby was made
+an instrument of cruel fate and&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Come over and see the little cap I've made Bennie so as to do you honor,"
+called rosy Mrs. Tillett as I went down the street towards the grocery.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't got but six more yards of gingham to sew up for the two littlest,"
+Mrs. Spain called cheerily as she looked past a whirring sewing-machine out
+through a window that was wreathed with a cinnamon rose-vine in full bloom.</p>
+
+<p>"Want any help?" I called from the gate, which was flanked on both sides by
+blooming lilacs.</p>
+
+<p>"No; you go on down to the store. Mr. Silas have brought out ten suits of
+clothes for the men to pick from, and they are a-waiting for your taste.
+Persuade Joe Spain to get that purple mixed. I do love gay colors, and
+it'll go with my pink foulard."</p>
+
+<p>The scenes into which I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy
+in form, but serious in interpretation. The counter was piled high with
+men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the
+dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant
+angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling,
+embarrassed, harassed group of farmers in overalls. Before her stood Bud,
+attired in a light gray suit of aggressively new clothes, and she was using
+him hard as a dummy upon which to illustrate her vigorous and persuasive
+remarks.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I am glad you have come down, honeybunch," she exclaimed at sight of
+me. "Here's a bale of clothes and a bale of men, and nobody can seem to
+match 'em up suitable. I have at last got Bud Beesley here into a dead
+match for his beauty, if I do say it of my own son. Just look at him!" As
+she spoke she stood off from him and folded her plump hands across her wide
+waist in motherly rapture.</p>
+
+<p>And Bud, with his violet eyes and yellow shock, <i>was</i> beautiful in the
+"custom-made," fifteen-dollar gray cheviot, despite his red ears. All the
+Harpeth Valley farmer folk have French Cavalier, English gentle, and Irish
+good blood in them, with mighty little else and, as in the case of Bud and
+Polly Corn-tassel, when clothed in garments of the world, it comes to the
+surface with startling effect. Bud could have put on a gray slouch hat with
+either a crimson or an orange band and walked into any good Eastern college
+fraternity or club he might have chosen.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoo, Mother," said Bud as he turned around for my admiration, not
+surfeited with that of his mother.</p>
+
+<p>"I only hope some town girl won't catch him like your mother did William,"
+said Aunt Mary, with a laugh that ended in a little sigh that only I heard.
+Somehow I <i>will</i> feel psychically akin to Bud and Polly.</p>
+<p><a name="picture_4" id="picture_4"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illustr-04.jpg" width="500" height="345" alt="And Bud was beautiful in the &quot;custom-made&quot; fifteen-dollar
+gray cheviot with his violet eyes and yellow smock, in spite of his red
+ears" title="" />
+<span class="caption">And Bud was beautiful in the &quot;custom-made&quot; fifteen-dollar
+gray cheviot with his violet eyes and yellow smock, in spite of his red
+ears</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Town girls are all movie-struck and don't want a man if a butter-paddle
+goes along with him," said Bud, with a laugh that was echoed from the
+overalled group.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but Miss Nancy here has outsold any woman in Riverfield for cash on
+eggs and chickens before May first," said Mr. Spain as he picked up a gray
+purple coat from the top of the pile on the counter.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll marry and go away in a big car, too," said Bud, as he looked down
+and flecked an imaginary speck from the sleeve of his new coat. Something
+in his voice made me determine to introduce Belle Proctor's little
+sixteen-year-old sister to Bud in the near future. The kiddie spends half
+her time away from school in Bess's conservatory with Mr. G. Bird's
+non-resident family, and I think it will do her good to come out in the
+field and play with Bud. She is frail and too slight.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Miss Nancy, what do you think of this here purple to set me off?"
+asked Mr. Spain, as he held up the garment of his wife's desire. "Betty
+says it'll match out her dimity, and I 'low to match Betty as long as I
+can."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be the very thing, Mr. Spain," I said, as I controlled my horror at
+the flaring-colored coat and reminded myself that harmony of domestic
+relations is greater than any harmony of art.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, pick your coats and slip 'em on, all of you, so Nancy can judge you,"
+commanded the general. In a very short time each man had got out of his
+overall jumper and into his heart's desire.</p>
+
+<p>A stalwart, comely, clean-eyed group of American men they were as they
+stood on parade, clothed for the most part in seemly raiment, chosen with
+Uncle Silas's quiet taste, except in the case of Mr. Spain, where he had
+let his experience of the past lead his taste.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, dear God, don't let them ever have to be put into khaki," I prayed
+with a quick breath, for I knew, though they did not seem to recognize the
+fact, that this rally of the rural districts in the city hall was a part
+of the great program of preparedness that America was having forced upon
+her. I knew that the speech of the governor would be about the State
+militia and I knew that Evan Baldwin would talk to them about the
+mobilization of their stocks and crops. Quick tears flooded across my eyes,
+and I stretched out my hands to them.</p>
+
+<p>"You all look good to me," I faltered in some of Matthew's language,
+because I couldn't think of anything else to say but the prayer in my
+heart, and I didn't want to repeat that to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you have all passed your city examinations, so you can get back to
+work. Remember, that day after to-morrow is the junket, and one day won't
+be any too much to bank up your fires to run until you come back," said
+Aunt Mary in the way of dismissal.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk about vanity in women folks? The first peacock hatched out was of the
+male persuasion," she remarked as we stood at the emporium door and watched
+the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct
+for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down
+needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of
+compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we
+have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm
+pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed
+from the back door to her house on the hill and sent me out the front to
+Elmnest opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that there was some reason why Pan and I both chose to wear
+Roycroft clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Spain are in love after eight children," I
+remarked to myself happily. "I am in agony in any shoes Pan doesn't make. I
+wonder if any woman ever before was as much in love with a man about whom
+she knew so little&mdash;and so much as I do about Adam."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to know about him&mdash;I want to love him," I answered myself as
+I walked up the long elm avenue. Afterwards I recalled those words to
+myself, and they were bitter instead of sweet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+
+<p>Friday, the twenty-first of April, I shall always remember as the busiest
+day of my life, for, as Aunt Mary had said, it takes time to bank fires
+enough to keep a farm alive a whole half day even if it is not running. I
+did all my usual work with my small folk, and then I measured and poured
+out in different receptacles their existence for the last half of the next
+day. After breakfast on Saturday I finally decided upon Uncle Cradd as the
+most trustworthy person of the three ancients, one of whom I was obliged to
+depend upon for substitution. Rufus, I felt sure, would compromise by
+feeding every ration to the hogs, and I knew that he could persuade father
+to do likewise, but Uncle Cradd, I felt, would bring moral force to bear
+upon the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Uncle Cradd, here are all the different feeds in different buckets,
+each plainly marked with the time to give it. Please, oh, please, don't let
+father lead you off into Egypt or China and forget them," I said as I led
+him to the barn and showed him the mobilization of buckets that I had shut
+up in one of the empty bins.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not just empty it all out on the ground in front of the barn, Nancy,
+my dear, and let them all feed together in friendly fashion. I am afraid
+you take these pretty whims of yours too seriously," he said as he beamed
+affectionately at me over his large glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"Because Peckerwood Pup would eat up the Leghorn babies, and it would be
+extermination to some and survival to the most unfit," I answered in
+despair. "Oh, won't you please do it by the directions?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will, my child, I will," answered Uncle Cradd, as he saw that I was
+about to become tearful. "I will come and sit right here in the barn with
+my book."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you only will, Uncle Cradd, they will remind you when they are
+hungry. Mr. G. Bird will come and peck at you when it is time to feed his
+family, and the lambs and Mrs. Ewe will lick you, and Peckerwood Pup will
+chew you, so you can't forget them," I exclaimed in relief.</p>
+
+<p>"That will be the exact plan for action, Nancy. You can always depend upon
+me for any of the small attentions that please you, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I can depend on the fur and feathers and wool tribes better than I can on
+you, old dear," I said to myself, while I beamed on him with a dutiful,
+"Thank you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Then as Bud Corn-tassel had arrived to begin to hitch up the moth-eaten
+steeds to the ark, I ascended to my room to shed my farmer smocks, for the
+first time since my incarnation into them, and attire myself for the world
+again. The only garb of fashion I possessed, having sold myself out
+completely on my retirement, was the very stylish, dull-blue tailor suit in
+which I had traveled out the Riverfield ribbon almost three months before.
+But as that had been mid-February, it was of spring manufacture, and I
+supposed would still be able to hold its own.</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfectly beautiful, but it feels tight and hampering," I said as I
+descended to enter the coach Bud had driven around to the front door.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you give me a guarantee that you aren't just a dream lady I'll lose
+again in the city, Miss Nancy?" asked Bud, as he handed me into the
+Grandmother Craddock coach with great ceremony. Gale Beacon couldn't have
+done any better on such short notice.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be in smocks at feeding-time in the morning, Bud, just as you will be
+in overalls," I answered laughingly.</p>
+
+<p>"My, but you are a sight!" said Mrs. Tillett, as she handed up Baby Tillett
+to me, with such a beaming countenance that I knew she meant a
+complimentary construction to be placed upon her words. "Now, just take up
+them little girls and set 'em down easy, Mr. Bud, on account of their
+ruffles, and ram the boys in between to hold 'em steady. Now, boys, if you
+muss up the girls I'll make every one of you wear your shoes all day
+to-morrow to teach you manners. Go on, Mr. Bud."</p>
+
+<p>Thus nicely packed away, we started on down the Riverfield ribbon at the
+head of the procession, followed by Uncle Silas driving Aunt Mary's
+rockaway, with his beautiful, dappled, shining, gray mules hitched to it,
+and beside him sat Mrs. Addcock in serene confidence in being driven by a
+man who could drive a bank and a post-office and a grocery. Mamie and
+Gertie Spain were spread out carefully on the back seat, with only one
+small masculine Spain for a wedge. The Buford buggy, all spick and span
+from its first spring washing and polishing, came next, with Mr. and Mrs.
+Buford cuddling together on the narrow seat. They were a bride and groom of
+very little over a year's standing, and the blue-blanketed bundle that the
+bride carried in her arms was no reason, in Mr. Buford's mind, why he
+shouldn't drive with one hand while he held a steadying and affectionate
+arm around them both. Buford Junior was less than a month old, but why
+shouldn't he begin to adventure out in the big world? Parson and Mrs.
+Henderson came next, he with snow-white flowing beard, and she, beside him,
+in a gray bonnet with a pink rose, while beside her sat his mother, Granny
+Henderson, now past eighty, but with a purple pansy nestled in her
+waterwaves.</p>
+
+<p>Others followed, and the remainder waited on the steps of the emporium,
+with Aunt Mary and Polly, for Matthew and Bess to come for them. It was
+hard for them to realize that the powerful engines in both cars would take
+them into town in little over an hour, when the journey as they before had
+made it had always consumed six, and they were becoming impatient even
+before we left. So when we met Bess and Matthew half an hour later down the
+Riverfield ribbon, I hurried them back. I afterwards learned that they had
+had to persuade Mrs. Spain to reclothe herself in the pink foulard, because
+she had decided that they were not coming and had gone back to work.</p>
+
+<p>In reality I didn't draw a perfectly free breath until I saw the entire
+population of Riverfield seated in advantageous seats on the middle aisle
+in the town hall at six-thirty, and beginning to get out their
+lunch-baskets to feed themselves and the kiddies before the opening of the
+convocation at eight o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>According to the advice of Mrs. Addcock and Mrs. Tillett herself, I had
+taken a stuffed egg, a chicken wing, and a slice of jelly-cake for my own
+supper, along with Baby Tillett's bag of hard biscuits, over on a side
+aisle, and from that vantage-point I could see the whole party.</p>
+
+<p>"They are lovely&mdash;the loveliest of all, mine are," I said to myself as I
+surveyed them proudly and compared them with other lunching delegations,
+which I knew to be from Providence and Hillsboro and Cloverbend.</p>
+
+<p>Baby Tillett crowed a proud assent as he stuck a biscuit in his mouth and
+looked at the lights with the greatest pleasure. I took off his new cap
+with its two blue bows over the ears, unbuttoned his little piqu&eacute; coat,
+which I had almost entirely built myself, and which was of excellent cut,
+and settled down to dine with him in contentment.</p>
+
+<p>Then it happened that I was so weary from the day of excitement that I had
+hardly finished my supper before I snuggled Baby Tillett closer in my arms,
+as I felt him grow limp very suddenly, and with him I drifted off into a
+nap. I was sitting in a corner seat, but I don't yet see how I slept as I
+did and cuddled him too unless it was just the force of natural maternal
+gravitation that held my arms firmly around him, but the first thing I knew
+I opened my eyes on the whole hall full of people, who were wildly
+applauding the governor as he stepped forward on the platform. Hurriedly
+straightening my drooping head and looking guiltily around to see if I had
+been caught napping, I discovered Matthew Berry at my side in a broad
+chuckle, and I immediately suspected his stalwart right arm of being that
+force of gravitation.</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead to the world; let him lie across your knees and listen to the
+governor's heroics of introduction to Baldwin," said Matthew as he settled
+the limp baby across my lap with his bobbing head on my arm. And he
+adjusted his own arm less conspicuously along the seat at my back.</p>
+
+<p>"I was up at four," I whispered, as the applause died away and the governor
+began to speak.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor of the State of Harpeth is a good and substantial man, who was
+himself born out on Paradise Ridge, and he had called in all of his people
+from their fields to talk to them about a problem so serious that the
+world of men, who had hitherto considered themselves as competent to guide
+the great national ship of state through peaceful waters, had been impelled
+to turn and call to council the men from the plows and reapers, to add
+their wisdom in deciding the best methods of safeguarding the nation. His
+speech was a thoughtful presentation of the different methods of
+preparedness which the whole of America was weighing in the balance. He
+explained the army policy, the Congressional policy, and then that of the
+State guard, and he asked them to weigh the facts well so that if it should
+come to the vote of the people of the nation, they would vote with
+instructed wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>There was a strained gravity on all the listening faces, and I could see
+some of the women in the groups of farmer folk draw nearer against the
+shoulders of the men, who all sat with their arms along the back of the
+seats as Matthew sat beside me. Young Mrs. Buford held the precious, limp,
+blue bundle much closer in her arms, and hid her head on the broad
+shoulder next her own, but on Mrs. Spain's comely face I saw a light
+beginning to dawn as she proudly surveyed the four sturdy sons with shining
+faces who flanked her and Mr. Spain.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said the governor, "I have asked you here to-night to introduce
+formally to you one of the great sons of Old Harpeth, who has come back
+from the world, with his wealth and honors and wisdom and science, into his
+own valley, to show us how to make the plowshare support the machine-gun
+with such power that the world will respect its silence more than any
+explosion. A year or more ago he came home and asked me for his commission,
+and since then he has lived among you so as to become your friend, in hopes
+that he might be your chosen leader in this food mobilization. Gentlemen
+and ladies of the Harpeth Valley, I present to you Mr. Evan Baldwin, who
+will speak to you to-night on the 'Plowshare and the Machine-gun.' Friends,
+Evan Adam Baldwin."</p>
+
+<p>For a second there was expectant silence, and then from the back of the
+platform from behind a group of State officials stepped&mdash;my Pan!</p>
+
+<p>For a long second the whole hall full of people held their breath in a
+tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and
+fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling
+crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second
+breath, which they gave forth in one long masculine hurrah mingled with a
+feminine echo of delight. For several long minutes it would not be stilled
+as he stood and smiled down on them all and mocked them with his laugh
+mingling with theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Aunt Mary, the general, could stand it no longer, and forgetful of
+her Saint Paul, she arose with all the dignity of her two hundred pounds
+and raised her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"All be still, neighbors, and let Adam tell us the same things he's been
+saying for these many months, and then we'll let him shuck his fine
+clothes and come on home in my rockaway with us."</p>
+
+<p>"No, with us!" fairly yelled Cloverbend in unison of protest with
+Providence.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Aunt Mary," said Pan in the fluty tenderness with which he had
+always addressed her. "The governor doesn't know it, but I can't make a
+speech to you to-night. I am going to catch that ten o'clock train for
+Argentina, to get some wheat secrets for all of us, and I want all of you
+to begin right away to plow good and deep so you'll be ready for me when I
+get back in a few months. We'll have to inoculate the land before we sow.
+Only here are just one or two things I will say to you before I have to
+start."</p>
+
+<p>For about ten minutes Adam stood there before those farmer folk and, with
+his fluty voice and the fire glow in his eyes, led them up upon a high
+mountain of imagination and showed them the distant land into which he
+could lead them, which, when they arrived, they would find to be their own.</p>
+
+<p>The baby on my lap stirred, and I lifted him against my throbbing breast
+as I listened to this gospel of a new earth, which might be made into the
+outposts of a new Heaven, in which man would nourish his weaker brother
+into a strength equal to his own, so that no man or nation would have to
+fight for existence or a place in the sun. Then while we all sat breathless
+from his magic, Pan vanished and left us to be sent home rejoicing by the
+governor.</p>
+
+<p>Sent home rejoicing? Suddenly I realized that when Evan Adam Baldwin had
+gone, my Pan had also vanished without a word to me. What did it mean? His
+eyes hadn't found me sitting apart from my delegation with another woman's
+baby in my arms. Would there be a word for me in the morning?</p>
+
+<p>"In Baldwin emerges the new American," said Matthew, with a light in his
+face I had never seen before, as we all rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you blame every woman in the world for being mad about him when you saw
+that look in his eyes when he held out his hands and chanted that food
+plea to us? I'm glad he doesn't beckon to me, or I am afraid Owen Murray
+and Madam Felicia would be disappointed about that June decision of mine,"
+said Bess as she and Owen helped Bud pack the Tilletts and me into the ark
+for our return trip.</p>
+
+<p>"Will there be word for me in the morning?" the old wheels rattled all the
+way out the Riverfield ribbon, and I thought an old owl hooted the question
+at me from a dead tree beside the road, while I felt also that a
+mocking-bird sang it from a thicket of dogwood in ghostly bloom opposite.
+"Will there be word in the morning?"</p>
+
+<p>The next morning I awoke with the same question making a new motive in the
+chant on my heartstrings.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Cradd will bring his letter when he comes back from the post-office,
+and I know he'll send a message to you, Mr. G. Bird," I said happily, as I
+watered and fed and caressed and joyed in the entire barn family. "I hate
+him for being what he is and treating me this way, but I love him still
+more," I confided to Mrs. Ewe as I gave her an extra handful of wheat out
+of the blouse-pocket which I kept filled for Mr. G. Bird from pure
+partiality.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Cradd did not bring a letter from the post-office for me. The blow in
+the apple orchard and the purple plumes on the lilac bushes looked less
+brilliant in hue, but the tune on my heartstrings kept up a note of pure
+bravado. I weeded the garden all afternoon, but stopped early, fed early,
+and went up-stairs to my room before the last sunset glow had faded off the
+dormer windows. Opening my old mahogany chest, I took out a bundle I had
+made up the day after the advent of Mother Cow and the calf, spread it out
+on the bed, and looked it over.</p>
+
+<p>In it was an incredible amount of lingerie, made of cr&ecirc;pe de chine and
+lace, folded tightly and tied with a ribbon into a package not over a foot
+square. A comb and a brush of old ivory, which had set in its back a small
+mirror held in by a silver band, which father had purchased in Florence
+for me under a museum guaranty as a genuine Cellini work of art, were
+wrapped in a silk case, and a toothbrush and soap had occupied their
+respective oil-silk cases along with a tube of tooth paste and one of cold
+cream. Two pairs of soft, but strong, tan cotton stockings were tucked
+underneath the ribbon confining the lingerie, and a small prayer-book with
+both mine and my mother's name in it completed the&mdash;I hadn't exactly liked
+to call it a trousseau. It was all tied up in one of Adam's Romney
+handkerchiefs, which he had washed out one day in the spring branch and
+left hanging on a hickory sapling to dry, and which I had appropriated
+because I loved its riot of faded colors.</p>
+
+<p>"It is just about the size of his," I had said to myself as I had tied up
+its corners that day after my love adventure in the orchard under the
+chaperonage of Mother Cow, and I had laughed as I imagined Pan's face when
+he discovered that I had been so entirely unfemininely subservient to his
+command about light traveling. Suddenly I swept the bundle together and
+back in the chest, while a note of genuine fear swept into the song in my
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll write from New Orleans&mdash;he doesn't sail until to-morrow," I
+whispered as I quieted the discord and went down to prayers.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I shall not want.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He restoreth my soul:"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>intoned Uncle Cradd, and somehow the tumult in my heart was stilled for the
+night, and I could as usual take Pan into my prayer arms and ask God to
+keep him safe. I wonder how many women would really pray if there weren't
+men in the world to furnish them the theme!</p>
+
+<p>Also I wonder how it is possible for me to write about that following first
+week of May when I had to feel the chant die out of my heart and still
+live and help a lot of other live creatures, both people and animals, to go
+on breathing also.</p>
+
+<p>Each day Uncle Cradd failed to bring me a letter from the post-office, and
+after a week I ceased to look for one. I knew that Evan Adam Baldwin was on
+the high seas and that if he had not written before he sailed he never
+intended to write. My common sense kindly and plainly spoke this truth to
+my aching heart: Pan had been simply having a word adventure with me in
+character.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The beginning of the twentieth century has witnessed many startling
+inventions, reforms, evolutions, and revolutions, but mankind generally is
+not aware that the most remarkable result of many combined new forces is a
+woman whose intellect can go on functioning at the same time that her heart
+is aching with either requited or unrequited love. Just ten days after I
+had been jilted, instead of lying in a darkened room in hysterics, I went
+into a light corner of the barn, sat down on an upturned seed-bucket, took
+my farm-book on my knee, wet my pencil between my lips, and began to figure
+up the account between Evan Adam Baldwin and myself. First, I sat still for
+a long second and tried to set a price on myself the hour before I had
+first encountered him out on the Riverfield ribbon on the day I had made
+my entry into rural life. And think as hard as I could I couldn't think up
+a single thing I had done worth while to my race; so I had to write a great
+cipher against myself. Then in another column I set down the word "assets,"
+and after it I wrote, "The Golden Bird and family, eight hundred dollars."
+Then I thought intently back into the past and into the haircloth trunk and
+wrote, "Clothes, one hundred and fifty dollars."</p>
+
+<p>Then I sat for another long time and looked out the door to the Paradise
+Ridge across the Harpeth Valley, after which I smoothed the page, dated it,
+and again began to take stock of myself and the business. I listed the
+original investment of Mr. G. Bird and the ladies Leghorn, one of which was
+at that moment picking wheat from my pocket, on through their fifty
+progeny, for which I had established a price of twenty dollars per head,
+through the two lambkins I had bought from Rufus for ten dollars, Mother
+Cow and the calf, the hundred and fifty pearls in the incubators, half of
+which I had sold to Owen and Bess and ten of which I had sold to a real
+chicken dealer who knew Mr. G. Bird's pedigree and had come all the way
+from Georgia to buy them. The whole inventory, including the wheat I had
+paid Matthew for and the improvements I had made on the barn, or rather
+Adam had made, also including the prospects in the garden, amounted to
+eighteen hundred dollars. Then I thought still longer and finally after my
+own name wrote one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of "education." The
+total was nineteen hundred and fifty dollars, thus making a profit on my
+investments of about eight hundred dollars. After this calculation I sat
+and chewed the pencil a long time, then turned a fresh page, wrote, "Evan
+Adam Baldwin," on the one side, "Profit" in the middle, and a large cipher
+opposite.</p>
+
+<p>Then I closed the book forever with such decision that the Leghorn lady and
+Mrs. Ewe, who was helping her explore me, both jumped, and I rose to my
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I got eight hundred and fifty dollars out of the deal, and Evan Adam
+Baldwin only got a few mediocre and amateur kisses, which he shared with
+me, for all his hard labor in plowing and tilling and restoring Elmnest and
+me to the point of being of value in the scheme of things. I got the best
+of that deal and why should I sulk?" I said to myself in a firm and even
+tone of voice. I didn't.</p>
+
+<p>If I had worked like a couple of women when speeded up by a weird chant on
+my heartstrings, which I now recognized was just a part of the system used
+in my reorganization, I worked like five when my heart became perfectly
+dead and silent. I got out of my bed the very minute that the first gleam
+of consciousness came into my mind, before I could have a second to think
+about anything unprofitable, plunged into the old brass-bound cedar tub of
+cold water, which I had carried up from the spring in a bucket that matched
+it the night before, got into my corduroys and smock, and was out in the
+barn and at work before it would seem possible for a woman to more than
+open her eyes of understanding upon the world. All day long I weeded and
+hoed and harvested and fed and cleaned and marketed that farm until I fell
+dead between the posts of the old bed at night.</p>
+
+<p>I didn't pray. I knew God would understand.</p>
+
+<p>And through it all there was Matthew! The first week or two he remonstrated
+with me; then when he saw that I was possessed by the demon of work he just
+rolled up his sleeves, collected Polly and Bud, and helped. He promoted his
+best clerk in the office to a junior partnership, refused several important
+cases, bought the hundred-acre forest which joins Elmnest, which Aunt Mary
+had had in her family for generations, and which had been considered as
+waste land after the cedars had been cut off, and began to restore it. He
+never bothered me once in a sentimental way, and when he brought the plans
+of his house over on the knoll opposite Elmnest, Polly helped me enthuse
+and criticize them, and he went away seemingly content. His and Polly's
+Rhode Island Reds were rivaling my Leghorns in productiveness, and all of
+Riverfield seemed to have gone chicken mad. Mr. Spain traded a prize hog
+for a cock, and twelve black Minorca hens, and Mr. Buford brought the bride
+two settings of gray "Rocks" to start a college education for the bundle.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what the whole kit and biling is so busy about?" said Aunt
+Mary as she surveyed with pride a new hen-house that Bud had just finished,
+in which I saw the trap nests over which she had disputed with the
+commissioner of agriculture. "They were just woke up by that speech of
+Adam's, and they are getting ready to show him what Riverfield can do when
+he gets back. When did you say you expect him, honeybunch?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," I answered quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I thought Silas said you did," she answered absent-mindedly. "Now,
+you can have Bud, but not for keeps, because as I borned him I think I am
+entitled to work him." We all laughed as Bud and I betook ourselves and a
+large farm-basket full of late cabbage plants across to Elmnest.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Ann, please ma'am, make mother let me go to town to-night with Mr.
+Matthew and stay with Miss Bess. All her linen chest has come, and I want
+to see it," Polly Corn-tassel waylaid us and pleaded. I went back and laid
+the case before her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose it won't hurt her if all this marriage and giving in
+marriage don't get into her head. I aim to keep and work her at least two
+years longer to pay my trouble with her teething back," agreed Aunt Mary.
+"When did you say the wedding was going to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"June tenth," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard that Mr. Owen Murray talking to Mr. Spain about his wooded piece
+of land over by the big spring the other night. Looks like you are a pot
+of honey, sure enough, child, that draws all your friends to settle around
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it's the back-to-the-land vogue, and this is the most beautiful part
+of the Harpeth Valley," I answered as I again began to depart with Bud and
+the cabbage plants.</p>
+
+<p>"Adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the Garden of Eden
+was located right here. It was when your locusts were in full bloom and I
+asked him if he had run down Eve anywhere. Are you sure you don't know when
+he'll come back to see us all?" Aunt Mary's blue eyes danced with
+merriment.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I answered, and went hastily back to Bud and left her muttering to
+herself, "Well, Silas <i>did</i> say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>All afternoon I stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts
+behind Bud's hoe and refused even to think about Bess's wedding-chest. But
+at sunset I saw I must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of
+her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that I had sold and then borrowed
+back from her&mdash;or have a serious crisis in our friendship. I hadn't
+strength for that, and I had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise
+enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn't,
+though there was a positive uproar when Owen brought the whole Bird
+collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the
+dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as
+to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p>"Why is it, Matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here
+in the dark and not make me say a word?" I asked him as he brought me home
+in the after-midnight hush.</p>
+
+<p>"You've trained my heart into silence, Ann," he answered gently.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" I exclaimed, for I couldn't bear the thought of Matthew's big heart
+being silent too. Just then Polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat,
+fell off and had to be rescued. We put her out at home in a wilted
+condition from pure good times, and then Matthew took me on up to Elmnest.
+An old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black
+shadows, and Matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was
+quiet and well.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter?" I exclaimed as I ran to the side of the shed in
+which Mrs. Ewe and the lambs resided. "Strike your cigar-lighter quick,
+Matt."</p>
+
+<p>As Matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, I sank
+to my knees with a cry. There upon the grass lay one of my lambkins, and
+red blood was oozing from its woolly white throat. As I lifted it on my
+arm, its little body gave a shudder and then lay so still that I knew it
+was dead. Mother Ewe stood near in the shadow and gave a plaintive bleat as
+she came to my side.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," I sobbed as I looked up at Matthew, "it's dead. What did it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A dog," answered Matthew, as he knelt beside me and laid the tiny dead
+lamb back on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Peckerwood Pup!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, she's too young; some stray," answered Matthew as he look savagely
+around into the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the littlest one, and she licked my hand the last thing before I
+left. I can't bear it all, Matthew&mdash;this is too much for me," I said, and I
+sobbed into my hands as I sank down into a heap against the side of the
+bereaved sheep mother, who was still uttering her plaintive moans of
+question.</p>
+
+<p>I say now and I shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in
+the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who
+has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows
+her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms.
+Matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his
+breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel
+that a new day could dawn upon the world. I think from the way I huddled to
+his strength that he knew that I had given up the fight and that his hour
+was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me now, Ann?" he asked me; gently as he pressed his cheek
+against my hair.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want me, take me and help me find that dog to-morrow," I answered
+as I again reached out my hand and put it for the last time on the pathetic
+little woolly head. I couldn't hold back the sob.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in the house to bed, dear, for you are completely worn out. I'll bury
+the lamb and look for any traces that may help us to find the savage," said
+Matthew as he drew me to my feet and with quiet authority led me to the
+back door and opened it for me. For a second I let him take me again into
+his strong arms, but I wilted there and I simply could not raise my lips to
+his. The first time I remember kissing Matthew Berry was at his own tenth
+birthday party, and he had dropped a handkerchief behind me that I had
+failed to see as all of the budding flower and chivalry of Hayesville stood
+in a ring in his mother's drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Matt," I murmured to myself as I again fell dead between the
+posts of the ancestral bed.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning I awoke to a new world&mdash;or rather I turned straight about
+and went back into my own proper scheme of existence. At the crack of dawn
+I wakened and set my muscles for the spring from my pillows, then I
+stretched my arms, yawned, snuggled my cheek into those same pillows, and
+deliberately went to sleep, covering up my head with the old embroidered
+counter-pane to shut out from my ears a clarion crow from beyond my
+windows. When I next became conscious old Rufus' woolly head was peering
+anxiously into my room door, and I judged from the length of the shadows
+that the sun cast from the windows that it must be after ten o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"Am you sick?" he inquired with belligerent solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Rufus, and I'm going back to sleep. Call me in time to have dinner
+with father and Uncle Cradd," I answered as I again burrowed into the
+pillows.</p>
+
+<p>"I give that there rooster and family a bucket of feed," said Rufus
+begrudgingly, and he stood as if waiting to be praised for thus burying the
+hatchet that he had been mentally brandishing over the neck of the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>I made no response, but stretched my tired limbs out between the silky old
+sheets and again lost consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The next time I became intelligent it was when Polly's soft arm was slid
+under my neck and her red lips applied to my cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Ann, are you ill?" she questioned frantically. "Mr. Matthew and I
+have been here for hours and have fed and attended to everything. He made
+me come up because he was afraid you might be dead."</p>
+
+<p>"I am, Polly, and now watch me come back to life," I said as I sat up and
+blinked at the sun coming in through the western window, thus proclaiming
+the time as full afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"We found Mr. G. Bird and all of the other&mdash;" Polly was beginning to say
+when I cut her short.</p>
+
+<p>"Polly, dear, please go tell Matthew to ride down to the bank and telephone
+Bess that I'm coming in to stay a week with her and to invite Belle and
+Owen and the rest to dinner. By the time he gets back I'll be ready to go."
+As I spoke I threw the sheet from me and started to arise, take up my life,
+and walk.</p>
+
+<p>"But who'll attend to the chickens and&mdash;" Polly fairly gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know and I don't care, and if you want to go in to dinner with us,
+Polly, you had better hurry on, for you'll have to beg your mother hard," I
+said, and at the suggestion Polly fairly flew.</p>
+
+<p>I don't exactly know what Polly told Matthew about me, but his face was a
+study as I descended elegantly clad and ready to go to town with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good, dear!" he said as I raised my lips to his and gave him a second
+edition of that ring-around-rosy kiss. "I knew you would wear yourself out.
+I have telephoned Owen to motor out that young Belgian that Baldwin got
+down to run my farm, and he'll take charge of everything while you rest."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care whether he comes or not," I said as I walked towards the
+library door to say good-by to my parent twins, who hardly noticed me at
+all on account of a knotty disagreement in some old Greek text they were
+digging over.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you needn't worry about&mdash;" Matthew was continuing to say, with the
+deepest uncertainty in his face and voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," I answered. "Did Bess say she could get enough people together
+to dance to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll all go out to the country club and have a great fling," said
+Matthew, with the soothing tone of voice that one would use to a friend
+temporarily mentally deranged. "Hope Mother Corn-tassel lets Polly go."</p>
+
+<p>"There she is waiting at the gate for us with her frills in a bundle. Swoop
+her up, Matt, and fly for fear she is getting off without Aunt Mary's
+seeing her. Aunt Mary is so bent on keeping Polly's milking hand in."</p>
+
+<p>"That young Belgian says he's a good milker, and you needn't worry about&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," I again answered Matthew, and there was snap enough in my eyes
+and voice to make him whistle under his breath as he literally swooped up
+Polly, and they both had the good sense to begin to talk about town affairs
+and leave unmentioned all rural matters.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way into town Matthew swapped me for his Belgian in Owen's car, and
+Polly and I went on in with Owen and Bess, while Matthew returned out the
+Riverfield ribbon to install the rescuer of Elmnest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ann, this is delicious," said Bess as she came back with me to cuddle
+me and ask questions. "But what are&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bess," I said, looking her straight in the face with determination, "I am
+going to marry Matt two days before you marry Owen, though he doesn't know
+it yet, and if you talk about Elmnest to me I'll go and stay with Belle
+this week."</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly lovely, and how tired you are, poor dear!" Bess
+congratulated and exclaimed all in the same breath, then imparted both my
+announcement and my injunction to Owen on the front seat. I didn't look at
+Polly while Owen was laughing and exclaiming, but when I did she looked
+queer and quiet; however, I didn't let that at all affect the nice crisp
+crust that had hardened on me overnight. And I must say that if Corn-tassel
+wasn't happy that evening surrounded by the edition of masculine society
+that Matt had so carefully expurgated for her, she ought to have been.</p>
+
+<p>By that time I had told Matthew about his approaching marriage, accepted
+his bear-hug of joy, delivered before Bess and Polly and Owen and Belle,
+and I had been congratulated and received back into the bosom of my friends
+with great joy and hilarity.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I can take care of you forever and ever, Ann," whispered Matthew in
+his good-night, with his lips against my ear. And there in his strong,
+sustaining arms, even though limp with fatigue, I knew I never did, could,
+or would, love anybody like I loved him. I don't really suppose I did hear
+Polly sob on her pillow beside mine, where she had insisted on reposing.
+She must have been all right, for she was gone out into the rural district
+with Matthew before I was awake the next morning.</p>
+
+<p>After Annette had served mine and Bess's chocolate in Bess's bedroom we
+settled down to the real seriousness of trousseau talk, which lasted for
+many long hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Now if I sell you back all the things of yours I haven't worn for two
+hundred and fifty dollars that will leave you over three hundred in the
+bank to get a few wash frocks and hats and things to last you until you are
+enough married to Matthew to use his money freely," said Bess after about
+an hour of discussion and admiration of her own half-finished trousseau.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I should say those things would be worth about two hundred and fifty
+dollars now that they are third-hand," I answered Bess's excited eyes,
+giving her a look of well-crusted affection, for there are not many women
+in the world, with unlimited command of the material that Bess has, who
+would not have offered me a spiritual hurt by trying to give me back my
+thousand dollars' worth of old clothes which she had not needed in the
+first place when she bought them.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, that's all settled, and we'll begin to stretch that three hundred
+dollars to its limit. We won't care if things do tear, just so they look
+smart until you and Matthew get to New York. Matthew won't be the first
+bridegroom to go into raptures over a thirty-nine-cent bargain silk made
+up by a sixty-dollar dressmaker. I'm giving Owen a few deceptions in that
+line myself. That gray and purple tissue splits if you look at it, and I
+got it all for three dollars. Felicia made it up mostly with glue, I think,
+and I will be a dream in it&mdash;a dream that dissolves easily. Let's go
+shopping." As she thus led me into the maze of dishonest trousseau-buying,
+Bess began to ring for Annette.</p>
+
+<p>Of course most women in the world will refuse to admit that shopping can
+arouse them from any kind of deadness that the sex is heir to, but a few
+frank ones, like myself, for instance, will say such to be the case. For
+three weeks I gave myself up to a perfect debauch of clothes, and ended off
+each day's spree by dancing myself into a state of exhaustion. Everybody in
+Hayesville wanted to give Bess and me parties, and most of them did, that
+is, as many as we could get in at the rate of three a day between
+dressmakers and milliners and other clothing engagements. Owen got
+perfectly furious and exhausted, but Matthew kept in an angelic frame of
+mind through it all. I think the long days with Polly out in the open
+helped him a lot, though at times I detected a worried expression on the
+faces of them both, and I felt sure that they were dying to tell me that it
+had been a case of the razor from Rufus' shoe between him and the Belgian
+or that the oil was of the grade that explodes incubators, but I gave them
+no encouragement and only inquired casually from time to time if the
+parental twins were alive. Polly even tried me out with a bunch of roses,
+which I knew came from the old musk clump in the corner of the garden which
+I had seen rebudded, but I thanked her coldly and immediately gave them to
+Belle's mother. I saw Matthew comforting her in the distance, and his face
+was tenderly anxious about me all the rest of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, are we going to be&mdash;be married in town at a church?" Matthew
+inquired timidly one afternoon as he drove me home from a devastated hat
+shop on the avenue, in which Bess and I had been spending the day.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Matt dear, at Elmnest," I answered kindly, as a bride, no matter how
+worn out, ought to answer a groom, though Bess says that a groom ought to
+expect to be snapped every time he speaks for ten days before the wedding.
+"As long as I have got a home that contains two masculine parents I will
+have to be married in it. I'll go out the morning of the wedding, and you
+and Polly fix everything and invite everybody in Riverfield, but just the
+few people here in town you think we ought to have, not more than a dozen.
+Have it at five o'clock." I thought then that I fixed that hour because
+everybody would hate it because of the heat and uncertainty as to style of
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, dear," answered Matthew, carefully, as if handling
+conversational eggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Ann, where do you want us to fix the wedding&mdash;er&mdash;bell and altar?"
+Polly ventured to ask timidly a few days later.</p>
+
+<p>"The parlor, of course, Polly. I hate that room, and it is as far from the
+barn as possible. Now don't bother me any more about it," I snapped, and
+sent her flying to Matthew in consternation. Later I saw them poring over
+the last June-bride number of "The Woman's Review," and I surmised the kind
+of a wedding I was in for. That day I tried on a combination of tull, lace,
+and embroidery at Felicia's that tried my soul as well as my body.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no worse than any other wedding-dress I ever saw; take it off quick,
+Madame," I snapped as crossly as I dared at the poor old lady, who had
+gowned me from the cradle to the&mdash;I was about to say grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, la la, <i>mais</i>, you are <i>tr&egrave;s deficile</i>&mdash;difficult," she murmured
+reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Any more so than Bess?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Non</i>, perhaps <i>non</i>," she answered, with a French shrug.</p>
+
+<p>With beautiful tact Matthew fussed with his throttle, which I couldn't see
+stuck at all, the entire time he was driving me home, and left me with a
+careful embrace and also with relief in his face that I hadn't exploded
+over him. Owen is not like that to Bess; he just pours gas on her
+explosions and fans the resulting flame until it is put out by tears in his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's never get married at the same time any more, Ann," groaned Bess as
+Annette tried to put us both to bed that night before we fell dead on her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak to me!" was my answer as nearly as I can remember.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be glad to get Bess away from your influence," raged Owen at me the
+next day when I very nearly stepped on one of the little chickens that he
+was having run in and out from the conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll want to bring her back in a week if both your tempers don't
+improve," was my cutting reply as this time I lifted another of his small
+pets with the toe of my slipper and literally flung it across the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Great guns!" exploded Owen, as he retreated into the conservatory and
+shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>The next night was the sixth of June and the night of my wedding eve. All
+Bess's bridesmaids and groomsmen were dining with her to rehearse her
+wedding and to have a sort of farewell bat with Matthew and me.</p>
+
+<p>"What about your and Ann's wedding to Matthew, Miss Polly?" I heard Cale
+Johnson ask Polly as she and Matthew were untangling a bolt of wide,
+white-satin ribbon that I had tangled. "All the show to be of rustics?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody but Polly is going to stand by us," said Matthew, looking
+cautiously around to see if I was listening. "Ann doesn't believe in making
+much fuss over a wedding."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know I was to be in it until Miss Bess took me to be fitted&mdash;oh,
+it is a dream of a dress, isn't it, Mr. Matthew?" said Polly, with her
+enthusiasm also tempered by a glance in my direction.</p>
+
+<p>"It sure is," answered Matthew, with the greatest approval, as he regarded
+Polly with parental pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad I'm invited to see it," said Cale as he glanced at Polly
+tenderly. "I mean to be at the wedding, Matt," he added politely. Cale was
+to be best man with Polly as maid of honor at Bess's wedding, and he had
+been standing and sitting close at Polly's side for more than ten days.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's try it all over again, everybody," called Bess's wearied voice,
+interrupting Polly's enthusiastic description of ruffles.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding day was a nightmare. Annette and the housemaid and Bess and a
+girl from Madame Felicia's packed up three trunks full of my clothes and
+sent them all to the station.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I never had to see them again," I said viciously under my breath as
+the expressmen carried out the last trunk.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, dear, in these two suitcases are your wedding things and your
+going-away gown. Your dress is in the long box and we will send them all
+out early in the morning in my car. Matthew will drive us out as soon as we
+can get ready," Bess had said the night before, as she sank on my bed and
+spread out with fatigue.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next morning it took Annette until ten o'clock and a shower of tears to
+get Bess and me to sit up and take our coffee. She said the decorators were
+downstairs beginning on Bess's wedding decorations and that the sun was
+shining on my wedding-day.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I wish it had delayed itself a couple of hours. I'm too sleepy to
+get married," I grumbled as I sat up to take the tray of coffee on my
+knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Owen is a darling," I heard Bess murmur from her bed, which was against
+the wall and mine as our rooms opened into each other. I also heard a
+rustle of paper and smelled the perfume of flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"This is for Mademoiselle from Monsieur Berry," said Annette, as she
+triumphantly produced a white box tied with white ribbons that lay in the
+center of a bunch of wild field-roses.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it away and let me drink my coffee," I said, and I could see
+Annette's French eyes snap as she laid down the offering from Matthew and
+went to attend upon Bess.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Matt," I murmured when I had consumed the coffee and discovered the
+long string of gorgeous pearls in the white box. "Come on, Bess, let's
+begin to get married and be done with it," I called to her as I wearily
+arose. "What time did Polly say she and Matthew had decided to marry me?" I
+asked as I went into my bath.</p>
+
+<p>"Five o'clock, and it's almost twelve now," answered Bess in a voice of
+panic as I heard things begin to fly into place in her room.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the superhuman efforts and patience of Annette and two housemaids,
+directed from below by Owen and Judge Rutherford, it was half-past two
+o'clock before I was ready to descend to the car in which Matthew had been
+sitting, patiently waiting in the sunshine of his wedding day for almost
+two hours.</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty of time," he said cheerily, as I sank into the seat beside him, and
+Bess and Owen climbed in behind us. Owen's chauffeur took Judge Rutherford
+in Owen's car, and Annette perched her prim self on the front seat beside
+the wheel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Matt, there is nobody in the world like you," I said as I cast myself
+on his patience and imperturbability and also the strength of his broad
+shoulder next mine. I could positively hear Bess and Owen's joy over this
+bride-like manifestation, which the wind took back to them as we went
+sailing out of town towards the Riverfield ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>And to their further joy I put my cheek down against Matthew's throttle arm
+and closed my eyes so that I did not see anything of the twenty-mile
+progression out to Elmnest. I only opened them when we arrived in
+Riverfield at about half after three o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Was the village out to greet me? It was not. Every front door was closed,
+and every front shutter shut, and I might have felt that some dire
+disapproval was being expressed of me and my wedding if I had not seen
+smoke fairly belching from every kitchen chimney, and if I hadn't known
+that each house was filled with the splash of vigorous tubbing for which
+the kitchen stoves and wash boilers were supplying the hot water.</p>
+
+<p>"Bet at least ten pounds of soap has gone up in lather," said Matthew as he
+turned and explained the situation to Bess and Owen after I had explained
+it to him.</p>
+
+<p>At the door of Elmnest stood Polly in a gingham dress, but with both ends
+of her person in bridal array, from the white satin bows on the looped up
+plats to the white silk stockings and satin slippers, greeting us with
+relief and enthusiasm. Beside her stood Aunt Mary and the parent twins,
+also Bud, in the gray suit with a rose in his button-hole.</p>
+
+<p>Matthew handed me out and into their respective embraces, while he also
+gave Polly a bundle of dry-goods from which I could see white satin ribbon
+bursting.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything is ready," she confided to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it would be, Corn-tassel," he answered, with an expression of
+affectionate confidence and pride.</p>
+
+<p>Then from the embrace of Uncle Cradd I walked straight through the back
+door towards the barn, leaving both Bess and Annette in a state of wild
+remonstrance, with the wedding paraphernalia all being carried up the
+stairs by Bud and Rufus. Looking neither to the right nor to the left, I
+made my way to the barn-door and then stopped still&mdash;dead still.</p>
+
+<p>It was no longer my barn&mdash;it was merely the entrance to a model poultry
+farm that spread out acres and acres of model houses and runs behind it.
+Chickens, both white and red, were clucking and working in all the pens,
+and nowhere among them could I see the Golden Bird.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he's dead, too," I said as I turned on my heel and, without a
+word, walked back to the house and up to my room, past Polly and Matthew,
+who stood at the barn-door, their faces pale with anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>When I considered that I had been able for months to clothe myself with
+decency and leave my room in less than fifteen minutes, I could not see why
+time dragged so for me when being clothed by Annette and Aunt Mary. True,
+Aunt Mary paused to sniff into her handkerchief every few minutes or to
+listen to Annette's French raptures as she laid upon me each foolish
+garment up unto the long swath of heathenish tulle she was beginning to
+arrange when an interruption occurred in the shape of Rufus, who put his
+head in the door and mysteriously summoned Polly, who had come in to
+exhibit her silk muslin frills, in which she was the incarnation of young
+love's dream.</p>
+
+<p>"You are beautiful, darling," I had just said, with the first warmth in my
+voice I had felt for many days, when Rufus appeared and Polly departed to
+leave Annette and Aunt Mary to the task of the tulle and orange-blossoms.
+They took their time, and it was only five minutes to five when Bess came
+in to get her procession all marshalled.</p>
+
+<p>"Come down the back steps, darling, and let's all cool off on the back
+porch," she advised. "It is terribly hot up here under the roof, and Polly
+and Matthew say they have decided to come in from the back door so
+everybody will have a better view of you. How beautiful you are!"</p>
+
+<p>As directed, I descended and stood spread out like a white peacock on the
+back porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Now call Matthew and Polly," Bess directed Annette.</p>
+
+<p>For several minutes we waited.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Berry is not here," finally reported Annette, with fine dramatic
+effect of her outspread hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Owen to find him," commanded Bess. "It is five minutes late now, and
+they must make that seven-twenty New York train. Hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>Annette departed while Aunt Mary came to the back door and looked out
+questioningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Great guns, Bess, where is Matt?" demanded Owen as he came around the
+house with his eyes and hair wild.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Polly? she'll know!" I answered tranquilly.</p>
+
+<p>"I searched Mademoiselle Polly, and she is also not here," answered
+Annette, again running down the back stairs. From the long parlor and hall
+came an excited buzz, and Aunt Mary came out upon the back porch entirely
+this time.</p>
+
+<p>"Every one of you go and look for them and leave me here quiet if you don't
+want me to have a brain storm," I said positively. "They have probably gone
+to feed the chickens."</p>
+
+<p>Not risking me to make good my threat, Bess and Annette and Aunt Mary and
+Owen and Bud disappeared in as many different directions. They left me
+standing alone out on the old porch, along the eaves of which rioted a
+rose, literally covered with small pink blossoms that kept throwing
+generous gusts of rosy petals down upon my tulle and lace and the bouquet
+of exotics I held in my hand. Across the valley the skyline of Paradise
+Ridge seemed to be holding down huge rosy clouds that were trying to bubble
+up beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I drew aside the tulle from my face, dropped my bouquet, and
+stretched out my arms to the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>"I will lift up mine eyes to the hills&mdash;Oh, Pan!" I said in a soft agony of
+supplication as I felt the crust around me begin a cosmic upheaval.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this looks like a Romney bundle and my woman to follow into the
+woods. You know I won't have this kind of a wedding," suddenly fluted a
+stormy voice from the other side of the rose vine as Pan came up to the
+bottom of the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why," I began to say, and then stopped, because the storm was still
+bursting over my head from Pan, who was attired in his usual Roycroft
+costume and had in one hand the Romney bundle and in the other the usual
+white bundle of herbs. Also as usual he was guiltless of a hat, and the
+crests were unusually long and ruffled.</p>
+
+<p>"You look foolish, and I won't marry you that way. Go straight up-stairs
+and put on real clothes, get your bundle, and come on. I want to eat supper
+over on Sky Rock, and it is seven miles, and you'll have to cook it. I'm
+hungry," he stormed still more furiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody is inside waiting, and it's not your&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, tell 'em all to come out in the open. I won't take a mate in a
+house, even if it has to be done with this foolish paper," he continued to
+rage as he sought in the bandana bundle and produced an official document
+with a red tape on it. "You go and put on your clothes, and I'll break up
+this foolishness and get 'em in the yard."</p>
+
+<p>"But wait&mdash;you don't understand. You&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've got all the rest of your life to explain disobeying me like this
+when I expressly wrote you just what I wanted you to&mdash;" Pan went on with
+his raging. At this juncture Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door in mild
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Nancy, my child, our friends are growing impatient, and is there anything
+the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But here he was interrupted by a clamor of voices that fairly poured its
+volume around the corner of the house. In two seconds it explained itself
+by its very appearance. First came Matthew, walking slowly, and in his arms
+he carried a soaked bundle which he held to his breast as tenderly, I was
+sure, as young Mrs. Buford was holding the blue bundle in the parlor, and
+two long plaits hung down over his arm. From between him and the bundle
+there came a feeble squawking and fluttering of wings. From them all poured
+rivulets of water, and mingled with the squawks were weak gurgles. As I
+looked, Matthew stopped and lifted the bundle closer on his breast,
+disclosing its identity as that of Polly, and buried his face in the
+soaked hair while they all stood dripping together as the rest of us stood
+perfectly silent and still.</p>
+
+<p>"That fool Henri let the Golden Bird get away, and he flew across the river
+and fell in a tangle of undergrowth. Rufus called Polly, and she plunged
+right in after him. Her dress caught on the same snag and God, Ann, they
+were being sucked under just as I got to them. She's still unconscious." In
+some ways as unconscious as was the Corn-tassel, Matthew began to press hot
+kisses on the face under his chin which brought forth a feeble choke.</p>
+
+<p>"Lay her down on the porch, and I'll show you how to empty her lungs,
+Berry," said Adam, laying down his bundle and taking charge of the
+situation, as all the rest, even capable Aunt Mary, still stood helpless
+before the catastrophe. Reluctantly, Matthew obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Cradd, go in the house and tell them all what has happened, and ask
+them all to come out on the cool of the lawn until we can have the
+wedding. It will be in just a few minutes, tell them," I said, with the
+brain that had taken the incubator eggs to bed with Bess and me beginning
+to act rapidly. "Let me speak to you just a second, Matt," I said, and drew
+the dazed and dripping bridegroom to one side.</p>
+
+<p>"Matthew," I said very quietly and slowly so that I would not have to
+repeat the words, "I'm not going to marry you at all, but I'm going to
+marry Evan Baldwin. I'll tell you all about it when I come back from my
+honeymoon with him. You help me put it through and then stay right here and
+look after Polly. She may suffer terribly from shock."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God, Ann, my heart turned over in my breast and kicked when I saw her
+sink, and for a minute I couldn't find her," Matthew said as he gave a
+dripping shudder that shook some of the water off him and on my tulle. To
+the announcement of the loss of a bride he gave no heed at all, for at that
+moment, as Pan lifted the drenched bundle across his knees and patted it,
+a faint voice moaned out Matthew's name, and he flew to receive the revived
+Polly in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, hold her that way until I am sure I have established complete
+respiration," commanded Pan. "You women begin to take these wet rags off of
+her. Get two blankets." At which command the rest of the bridal party flew
+to work in different directions and I with them. Bess and I arrived in my
+room at the same moment, and she seized the two blankets I drew from the
+chest and departed without waiting for words. As I drew out the blankets,
+something else rolled to the floor, and I saw it was my Romney bundle,
+packed weeks before my death.</p>
+
+<p>Its suggestion was not to be denied. I stopped just where I was, and in two
+minutes my strong hands ripped that tulle and lace and chiffon from my back
+without waiting to undo hooks and eyes. In another three minutes I was into
+a pair of the tan cotton stockings and the flat shoes, which Pan had made
+me that rainy day in the barn, had on my corduroys and a linen smock, and
+was running down to my wedding with wings of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>When I reached the back porch I found Polly sitting up on the floor, with
+Matthew's arms around her, and the entire wedding-party standing beside the
+back steps, looking on and ejaculating with thankfulness. Old Parson
+Henderson stood near, beaming down benedictions for the rescue, and I
+decided that they were all in a daze in which anything could be put over on
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's my bundle and me," I whispered to Pan, as he stood regarding the
+young recovered squaw proudly. "Hand the license to Parson Hendricks. I'll
+make him go on and marry us and get away before anybody puts me back into
+tulle."</p>
+
+<p>"As Polly is all right now we'll have the wedding, for it's getting late,
+and we want to get across to the Paradise Ridge to camp," said Adam, with
+the fluty command in his voice which always gets attention and obedience.
+As he spoke he put down his bundle, gave Parson Hendricks the document, and
+drew me beside him. I kept my bundle in my hand and stood with my other in
+his.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I didn't know that&mdash;" the old parson began to splutter while a murmur
+of surprise and question began to arise among the hitherto hypnotized
+wedding-guests. Judge Rutherford stood apart with the twin parents showing
+them some book treasure he had unearthed for father, and I don't think that
+either one of my natural guardians was at my wedding except in body.</p>
+
+<p>At the critical moment dear old Matt did rise to the occasion, as did Polly
+also, with a crimson glow coming into her drenched cheeks, pallid only a
+second before, and a light like sunrise on a violet bank coming into her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"She's always intended to marry Baldwin. I knew all about it. Go on!"
+Matthew commanded, as he supported Polly in her blankets on wobbly bare
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>During the resuscitation of Polly, Owen Murray, true to his new passion for
+the Leghorn family, had been reviving Mr. G. Bird and now with regard for
+decorum, he set him quietly upon his feet. Did the Golden Bird run like a
+coward from the scene of the catastrophe of his making? He did not. He
+deliberately stretched his wings, gave a mighty crow, and walked over and
+began to peck in my smock-pockets at corn that had lain there many long
+weeks for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Parson," commanded Pan again, impatiently, and then standing
+together in the fading sunlight, Pan, Mr. G. Bird, and I were married.</p>
+
+<p>Did Pan allow me to stay and make satisfactory explanations of my conduct
+to my friends and enjoy the wedding festivities so carefully copied out of
+the "Review" by Polly and Matthew? He did not. Immediately after the
+ceremony he picked up his two bundles and turned to all of our assembled
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be back in a few weeks, and then I'll show you what I learned in
+Argentina. We have to hurry now to get across the valley. Some of the fine
+sheep over at Plunkett's are down with foot rash, and I want to be there by
+noon. Luck to you all." With these words Pan led me around the corner of
+the house, through the old garden, and out into the woods, Mr. G. Bird
+still following at the smock-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to go back and lock him up; he'll follow me," I said, as I
+paused and took the Golden Bird's proud head in my hand and let him peck at
+a dull gold circle on my third finger, which, I am sure, Pan himself had
+hammered out of a nugget for me.</p>
+
+<p>"No, let's take him. I want to show him over at Plunkett's and then in
+Providence and Hillsboro, to grade up their poultry. I doubt if there's his
+equal in America," answered Pan as he went on ahead of me to break the
+undergrowth into which he was leading me underneath the huge old trees.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't write you to let that fool Belgian prune the whole place like
+that," Pan remarked as we paused at old Tilting Rock and looked down upon
+the orderly and repaired Elmnest in the sunset glow.</p>
+
+<p>"Write?" I murmured weakly, while my mind accused Uncle Cradd, and rightly
+too, as I learned later after a search in his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't any use sending any letter after that New Orleans one, because I
+traveled on the return trip all the way myself. Still you did pretty well
+to get the wedding and all ready at the hour I set, even if you did make
+that awful flummery mistake. I'll forgive you even that after I get over
+the shock of seeing you look that way."</p>
+
+<p>"The hour you set?" I again murmured a weak question.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought of writing you to get ready by nine o'clock in the morning, but
+I knew I'd have to stop in Hayesville for that bit of red tape, so I said
+five o'clock and had to hustle to make it. I knew you'd be ready. Now
+you'll have to travel, for we have five miles to go and it takes the pot
+two hours to simmer. Are you hungry?"</p>
+
+<p>I hadn't the strength to answer. I had just enough to pad along behind at
+his heels with Mr. G. Bird at mine. However, as I padded, I suddenly felt
+return that strength of ten women which I had put from me the morning I
+fled from the empty Elmnest, and I knew that it had come upon me to abide.</p>
+
+<p>I needed every bit of the energy of ten ordinary women to keep up with
+Pan's commands, as I helped him make camp beside a cool spring that bubbled
+out of a rock in a little cove that was swung high up on the side of
+Paradise Ridge. I washed the bundle of greens he had brought to the wedding
+and set them to simmer with the inevitable black walnut kernels in a pot
+that he produced from under a log in the edge of the woods, along with a
+couple of earthen bowls like the ones he kept secreted in the spring-house
+at Elmnest.</p>
+
+<p>"Got 'em all over ten States," he answered, as I questioned him with
+delight at the presence of our old friends. Then while I crouched and
+stirred, he took his long knife out, cut great armfuls of cedar boughs,
+threw them in a shadow at the foot of a tall old oak, and with a bundle of
+sticks swept upon them a great pile of dry leaves into the form of a huge
+nest. The golden glow was just fading as I lifted the pot and poured his
+portion in his bowl, then mine in the other, while he cut the black loaf he
+had taken from his bundle into hunks with his knife. It was after seven
+o'clock, and the crescent moon hung low by the ridge, waiting for the sun
+to take its complete departure before setting in for its night's joy-ride
+up the sky. It was eight before Pan finished his slow browsing in his bowl
+and came over to crouch with me out on the ledge of rock that overlooked
+the world below us. Clusters of lights in nests of gray smoke were dotted
+around over the valley, and I knew the nearest one was Riverfield; indeed I
+could see a bunch of lights a little way apart from the rest, and I felt
+sure that they were lighting the remaining revelers at my wedding-feast at
+Elmnest. The Golden Bird had gone sensibly to roost on one of the low
+limits of the old oak, and he reminded me of the white blur of Polly's
+wedding bell, which I had caught a glimpse of as I ran through the hall at
+Elmnest.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I am thy child</i>," crooned Pan, with a new note to his chant that
+immediately started on my heartstrings. "And I'm tired," he added as he
+stretched himself on the rock beside me, laid his head on my breast, and
+nuzzled his lips into my bare throat.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to lift the crests and look at the tips of your ears, Pan," I
+said as I held him tight.</p>
+
+<p>"Better not," he mocked me.</p>
+
+<p>I did, and the tips were&mdash;I never intend to tell.</p>
+
+<p>The lights were twinkling out in the valley one by one, and the young moon
+made the purple blackness below us only faintly luminous when Pan drew me
+closer and then into the very edge of the world itself, and pointed down
+into the soft darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"We are all like that, we natives of this great land&mdash;asleep in the midst
+of a silvery mist, while the rest of the world is in the blaze of hell.
+We've got to wake up and take them to our breast, to nourish and warm and
+save them. There'll be just you and I and a few others to call the rest of
+our people until they hear and value and work," he said as he settled me
+against him so that the twain chants of our heartstrings became one.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll follow you through the woods and help you call, Adam," I said softly,
+with my lips under the red crest nearest to me.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll bring you back here to nest and stay with you until your young
+are on their feet, with their eyes open," Pan crooned against my lips.
+"Dear God, what a force unit one woman and one man can create!"</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h3><b>THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE</b></h3>
+
+<h4><i><b>By</b></i> <span class="smcap"><b>Marion Polk Angellotti</b></span></h4>
+
+
+<p>This is not a story of laughter or tears, of shock or depression. It has no
+manufactured gloom. It preaches no reform. It has not a single social
+problem around which the characters move and argue and agonize. No reader
+need lie awake at night wondering what the author meant; all she intends to
+convey goes over the top with the first sight of the printed words. The
+story invites the reader to be thrilled, and dares him (or her) to weep.</p>
+
+<p>Briefly, "The Firefly of France" is in the manner of the romance&mdash;in the
+manner of Dumas, of Walter Scott. It is a story of love, mystery, danger,
+and daring. It opens in the gorgeous St. Ives Hotel in New York and ends
+behind the Allied lines in France. The story gets on its way on the first
+page, and the interest is continuous and increasing until the last page.
+And it is all beautifully done.</p>
+
+<p>The Philadelphia Record says: "No more absorbing romance of the war has
+been written than 'The Firefly of France.' In a sprightly, spontaneous way
+the author tells a story that is pregnant with the heroic spirit of the
+day. There is a blending of mystery, adventure, love and high endeavor that
+will charm every reader."</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>12mo, 363 pages</i><br />
+<i>Illustrated by Grant T. Reynard</i><br />
+<i>Price $1.40</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At All Bookstores<br />
+Published by<br />
+<br />
+THE NEW CENTURY CO.<br />
+<br />
+353 Fourth Avenue<br />
+New York City<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h3><b>FILM FOLK</b></h3>
+
+<h4><b>"Close-ups" of the Men, Women and Children who make the "Movies."</b></h4>
+
+<h4><i><b>By</b></i> <span class="smcap"><b>Rob Wagner</b></span></h4>
+
+
+<p>A book of humor and entertaining facts. It is a sort of Los Angeles
+Canterbury Tales wherein appears the stories, told in the first person, of
+the handsome film actor whose beauty is fatal to his comfort; of the child
+wonder; the studio mother; the camera man, who "shoots the films"; the
+scenario writer; the "extra" man and woman, whose numbers are as the sands
+of the sea; the publicity man, who "rings the bells," etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>All the stories are located in or near Los Angeles, a section more densely
+populated with makers of "movies" than any other section on earth. The
+author lives there, he has been in sympathetic contact with these votaries
+of this new art since its beginning, and his statements are entirely
+trustworthy.</p>
+
+<p>"Film Folk" is not a series of actual biographies of individuals; the
+author in each case presents an actor, a director or one of the other
+characters for the sake of concreteness and to carry out the story-form,
+and he contrives to set forth in the course of the book the entire
+movie-making world. The reader gets a clear idea of how the films are made
+and he is immensely entertained with the accounts of the manners and
+customs of the inhabitants of the vast movie villages&mdash;manners and customs
+unique in many respects.</p>
+
+<p>The stories are told in a style as easy to read as the author is
+good-humored.</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>8vo, 356 pages</i><br />
+<i>Illustrated from photographs</i><br />
+<i>Price $2.00</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At All Bookstores<br />
+Published by<br />
+<br />
+THE CENTURY CO.<br />
+<br />
+353 Fourth Avenue<br />
+New York City<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Bird, by Maria Thompson Daviess
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Golden Bird, by Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Golden Bird
+
+Author: Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+Illustrator: Edward L. Chase
+
+Release Date: October 30, 2005 [EBook #16963]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN BIRD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN BIRD
+
+BY
+
+MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
+
+Author of "The Melting of Molly," "Phyllis," "Sue Jane," "The Tinder Box,"
+etc.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD L. CHASE
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1918
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+Copyright, 1918, by
+BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+_Published, September, 1918_
+
+[Transcriber's note: Minor typos corrected.]
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Polly, all restraint leaving
+her young face and body as she fell on her knees before the sultan]
+
+
+
+
+TO
+IDA CLYDE CLARKE
+WHOSE COURAGE INSPIRES ME
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Polly, all restraint leaving her young face
+and body as she fell on her knees before the sultan
+
+A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while Adam stood over
+her with something in his arms
+
+I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins came and
+welcomed him
+
+And Bud was beautiful in the "custom-made" fifteen-dollar gray cheviot with
+his violet eyes and yellow shock, in spite of his red ears
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN BIRD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The primary need of a woman's nature is always supposed to be love, but
+very suddenly I discovered that in my case it was money, a lot of it and
+quick. That is, I thought I needed a lot and in a very great hurry; but if
+I had known what I know now, I might have been contented feeding upon the
+bread of some kind of charity, for instance, like being married to Matthew
+Berry the very next day after I discovered my poverty. But at that period
+of my life I was a very ignorant girl, and in the most noble spirit of a
+desperate adventure I embarked upon the quest of the Golden Bird, which in
+one short year has landed me--I am now the richest woman in the world.
+
+"But, Ann Craddock, you know nothing at all about a chicken in any more
+natural state than in a croquette," stormed Matthew at me as he savagely
+speared one of those inoffensive articles of banquet diet with a sharp
+silver fork while he squared himself with equal determination between me
+and any possible partner for the delicious one-step that the band in the
+ball-room was beginning to send out in inviting waves of sound to round the
+dancers in from loitering over their midnight food.
+
+"The little I do _not_ know about the chicken business, after one week
+spent in pursuit of that knowledge through every weird magazine and state
+agricultural bulletin in the public library, even you could learn, Matthew
+Berry, with your lack of sympathy with the great American wealth producer,
+the humble female chicken known in farmer patois as a hen. Did you know
+that it only costs about two dollars and thirteen cents to feed a hen a
+whole year and that she will produce twenty-seven dollars and a half for
+her owner, the darling thing? I know I'll just love her when I get to know
+her--them better, as I will in only about eighteen hours now."
+
+"Ann, you are mad--mad!" foamed Matthew, as he set down his plate of
+perfectly good and untasted food, and buried his head in his hands until
+his mop of black hair looked like a big blot of midnight.
+
+"I'm not mad, Matthew, just dead poor, an heiress out of a job and with the
+necessity of earning her bread by the sweat of her brow instead of
+consuming cake by the labor of other people. Uncle Cradd is coming in again
+with a two-horse wagon, and the carriage to move us out to Elmnest
+to-morrow morning. Judge Rutherford will attend to selling all the property
+and settle with father's creditors. Another wagon is coming for father's
+library, and in two days he won't know that Uncle Cradd and I have moved
+him, if I can just get him started on a bat with Epictetus or old Horace.
+Then me for the tall timbers and my friend the hen.
+
+"Oh, Ann, for the love of high heaven, marry me to-morrow, and let me move
+you and Father Craddock over into that infernal, empty old barn I keep open
+as a hotel for nigger servants. Marry me instead--"
+
+"Instead of the hen?" I interrupted him with a laugh. "I can't, Matt, you
+dear thing. I honestly can't. I've got to go back to the land from which my
+race sprang and make it blossom into a beautiful existence for those two
+dear old boys. When Uncle Cradd heard of the smash from that horrible
+phosphate deal he was at the door the next morning at sun-up, driving the
+two gray mules to one wagon himself, with old Rufus driving the gray horses
+hitched to that queer tumble-down, old family coach, though he hadn't
+spoken to father since he married mother twenty-eight years ago.
+
+"'Ready to move you all home, bag and baggage, William,' he said, as he
+took father into his huge old arms clad in the rusty broadcloth of his best
+suit, which I think is the garment he purchased for father's very worldly,
+town wedding with my mother, which he came from Riverfield to attend for
+purposes of disinheriting the bridegroom and me, though I was several years
+in the future at that date. 'Elmnest is as much yours as mine, as I told
+you when you sprigged off to marry in town. Get your dimity together,
+Nancy! Your grandmother Craddock's haircloth trunk is strapped on behind
+her carriage there, and Rufus will drive you home. These mules are too
+skittish for him to handle. Fine pair, eh, William?' And right there in the
+early dawn, almost in front of the garage that contained his touring
+Chauvinnais and my gray roadster, father stood in his velvet dressing-gown
+and admired the two moth-eaten old animals. Now, I honestly ask you,
+Matthew, could a woman of heart refuse at least to attempt to see those two
+great old boys through the rest of their lives in peace and comfort
+together? Elmnest is roof and land and that is about all, for Uncle Cradd
+never would let father give him a cent on account of his feud with mother,
+even after she had been dead for years. Father would have gone home with
+him that morning, but I made him stay to turn things over to Judge
+Rutherford. Aren't they great, those two old pioneers?"
+
+"They are the best sports ever, Ann, and I say let's fix up Elmnest for
+them to live in when they won't stay with us, and for a summer home for us
+to go and take--take the children for rural training. Now what do you
+say--wedding to-morrow?" And the light in dear old Matthew's eyes was very
+lovely indeed as the music grew less blatant and the waiter turned down the
+lights near the little alcove that the wide walnut paneling made beside the
+steps that go up to the balcony. I have always said that the Clovermead
+Country Club has the loveliest house anywhere in the South.
+
+"No, Matthew, I care too much about you to let you marry a woman in search
+of a roof and food," I answered him, with all of the affection I seemed to
+possess at that time in my eyes. "You deserve better than that from me."
+
+"Now, see here, Ann Craddock, did I or did I not ask you to marry me at
+your fourteenth birthday party, which was just ten years ago, and did you
+or did you not tell me just to wait until you got grown? Have you or have
+you not reached the years of discretion and decision? I am ready to marry,
+I am!" And as he made this announcement of his matrimonially inclined
+condition of mind, Matthew took my hand in his and laid his cheek against
+it.
+
+"My heart isn't grown up yet, Matt," I said softly, with all the tenderness
+I, as I before remarked, at that time possessed. "Don't wait for me. Marry
+Belle Proctor or somebody and--and bring the--babies out to Elmnest for--"
+
+The explosion that then followed landed me in Owen Murray's arms on the
+floor of the ball-room, and landed Matthew in his big racing-car, which I
+could hear go roaring down the road beyond the golf-links.
+
+There is a certain kind of woman whose brain develops with amazing
+normality and strength, but whose heart remains very soft-fibered and
+uncertain, with tendencies to lapse into second childhood. I am that garden
+variety, and it took the exercising of many heart interests to toughen my
+cardiac organ.
+
+As I traveled out the long turnpike that wound itself through the Harpeth
+Valley to the very old and tradition-mossed town of Riverfield, in the
+high, huge-wheeled, swinging old coach of my Great-grandmother Craddock,
+sitting pensively alone while father occupied the front seat beside Uncle
+Cradd, both of them in deep converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle
+Cradd bumbled the air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old
+bass, I should have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the
+devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon his
+old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into exile; but
+I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon the faded rose
+leather of those ancestral cushions? That was not the case, for upon the
+seat beside me rode the Golden Bird in a beautiful crate, which bore the
+legend, "Cock, full brother to Ladye Rosecomb, the world's champion,
+three-hundred-and-fourteen-egg hen, insured at one thousand dollars.
+Express sixteen dollars." And in another larger crate, strapped on top of
+the old haircloth trunk, which held several corduroy skirts, some coarse
+linen smocks made hurriedly by Madam Felicia after a pattern in "The
+Review," and several pairs of lovely, high-topped boots, as well as a
+couple of Hagensack sweaters, rode his family, to whom he had not yet even
+spoken. The family consisted of ten perfectly beautiful white Leghorn
+feminine darlings whose crate was marked, "Thoroughbreds from Prairie Dog
+Farm, Boulder, Colorado." I had obtained the money to purchase these very
+much alive foundations for my fortune, also the smart farmer's costume, or
+rather my idea of the correct thing in rustics, by selling all the lovely
+lingerie I had brought from Paris with me just the week before the terrible
+war had crashed down upon the world, and which I had not worn because I had
+not needed them, to Bess Rutherford and Belle Proctor at very high prices,
+because who could tell whether France would ever procure their like again?
+They were composed mostly of incrustations of embroidery and real Val, and
+anyway the Golden Bird only cost seven hundred dollars instead of the
+thousand, and the ladies Bird only ten dollars apiece, which to me did not
+seem exactly fair, as they were of just as good family as he. I was very
+proud of myself for having been professional enough to follow the
+directions of my new big red book on "The Industrious Fowl," and to buy
+Golden Bird and his family from localities which were separated as far as
+is the East from the West. My company was responsible for my
+light-heartedness at a time when I should have been weeping with vain
+regrets at leaving life--and perhaps love, for I couldn't help hearing in
+my mind's ears that great dangerous racer bearing Matthew away from me at
+the rate of eighty miles an hour. I was figuring on just how long it would
+take the five to eight hundred children of the Bird family, which I
+expected to incarnate themselves out of egg-shells, to increase to a flock
+of two thousand, from which, I was assured by the statistics in that very
+reliable book, I ought to make three thousand dollars a year, maybe five,
+with "good management." Also I was not at all worried about the "good
+management" to be employed. I intended to begin to exert it the minute of
+my arrival in the township of Riverfield. I had even already begun to use
+"thoughtful care," for I had brought a box of tea biscuits along, and I
+felt a positive thrill of affection for Mr. G. Bird as he gratefully
+gobbled a crushed one from my hand. Also it was dear of him the way he
+raised his proud head and chuckled to his brides in the crate behind him
+to come and get their share. It was pathetic the way he called and called
+and they answered, until I finally stopped their mouths with ten other
+dainties, so that he could consume his in peace. Even at that early stage
+of our friendship I liked the Golden Bird, and perhaps it was just a wave
+of prophetic psychology that made me feel so warmly towards the proud,
+white young animal who was to lead me to--
+
+So instead of the despair due the occasion, I was happy as I jogged slowly
+out over the twenty long miles that stretched out like a silvery ribbon
+dropped down upon the meadows and fields that separate the proud city of
+Hayesville and the gray and green little old hamlet of Riverfield, which
+nestles in a bend of the Cumberland River and sleeps time away under its
+huge old oak and elm and hackberry trees, kept perpetually green by the
+gnarled old cedars that throw blue-berried green fronds around their winter
+nakedness. As we rode slowly along, with a leisure I am sure all the
+motor-car world has forgotten exists, the two old boys on the front seat
+hummed and chuckled happily while I breathed in great gulps of a large,
+meadow-sweet spring tang that seemed to fairly soak into the circulation of
+my heart. The February day was cool with yet a kind of tender warmth in its
+little gust of Southern wind that made me feel as does that brand of very
+expensive Rhine wine which Albert at the Salemite on Forty-second Street in
+New York keeps for Gale Beacon specially, and which makes Gale so furious
+for you not to recognize, remember about, and comment upon at his really
+wonderful dinners to bright and shining lights in art and literature.
+Returning from New York to the Riverfield Road through the Harpeth Valley,
+I also discovered upon the damsel Spring a hint of a soft young costume of
+young green and purple and yellow that was as yet just a mist being draped
+over her by the Southern wind.
+
+"I feel like the fairy princess being driven into a land of enchantment,
+Mr. Golden Bird," I remarked as I leaned back upon the soft old cushions
+and took in the first leisurely breath of the air of the open road that my
+lungs had ever inhaled: one simply gulps air when seated in a motor-car.
+"It is all so simple and easy and--"
+
+Just at this moment happened the first real adventure of my quest, and at
+that time it seemed a serious one, though now I would regard it as of very
+little moment. Suddenly there came the noise of snipping cords, the feeling
+of jar and upheaval, and before I could turn more than half-way around for
+purposes of observation, the entire feminine Bird family in their temporary
+crate abode slid down into the dust of the road with a great crash. I held
+my breath while, with a jolt and a bounce and a squeak of the heavy old
+springs, Uncle Cradd brought the ancestral family coach to a halt about ten
+feet away from the wreck, which was a melee of broken timber, squeaking
+voices, and flapping wings. As soon as I recovered from the shock I sprang
+from my cushions beside Mr. G. Bird, who was fairly yelling clucks of
+command at this family-to-be, and ran to their assistance. Now, I am very
+long and fleet of limb, but those white Leghorn ladies were too swift for
+me, and before I reached the wreck, they had all ten disentangled
+themselves from the crushed timbers and had literally taken to the woods,
+through which the Riverfield ribbon was at that moment winding itself.
+Clucking and chuckling, they concealed themselves in an undergrowth of
+coral-strung buck bushes, little scrub cedars, and dried oak leaves, and I
+could hear them holding a council of war that sounded as if they were to
+depart forever to parts unknown. In a twinkling of an eye I saw my future
+fortune literally take wings, and in my extremity I cried aloud.
+
+"Oh, call them all back, Mr. Golden Bird," I pleaded.
+
+"Now, Nancy, that is always what I said about hens. They are such pesky
+womanish things that it's beneath the dignity of a man to bother with 'em.
+I haven't had one on the place for twenty years. We'll just turn this
+rooster loose with them and we can go on home in peace," said Uncle Cradd
+as he peered around the side of the coach while father's mild face appeared
+on the other side. As he spoke, he reached back and released my Golden Bird
+from his crate and sent him flying out into the woods in the direction of
+his family.
+
+"Oh, they are the only things in the world that stand between me and
+starvation," I wailed, though not loud enough for either father or Uncle
+Cradd to hear. "Please, please, Golden Bird, come back and bring the others
+with you," I pleaded as I held out my hand to the proud white Sultan, who
+had paused by the roadside on his way to his family and was now turning
+bright eyes in the direction of my outstretched hand. In all the troubles
+and trials through which that proud Mr. G. Bird and I went hand in hand, or
+rather wing in hand, in which I was at times hard and cold and
+disappointed in him, I have never forgotten that he turned in his tracks
+and walked majestically back to my side and peered into the outstretched
+hand with a trustful and inquiring peck. Some kind fortune had brought it
+to pass that I held the package of tea biscuits in my other hand, and in a
+few breathless seconds he was pecking at one and calling to the foolish,
+faithless lot of huddled hens in the bushes to come to him immediately.
+First he called invitingly while I held my breath, and then he commanded as
+he scratched for lost crumbs in the white dust of the Riverfield ribbon,
+but the foolish creatures only huddled and squeaked, and at a few cautious
+steps I took in their direction, they showed a decided threat of vanishing
+forever into the woods.
+
+"Oh, what will I do, Mr. G. Bird?" I asked in despair, with a real sob in
+my throat as I looked toward the family coach, from which I could hear a
+happy and animated discussion of Plato's Republic going on between the two
+old gentlemen who had thirty years' arrears in argument and conversation to
+make up. I could see that no help would come from that direction. "I can't
+lose them forever," I said again, and this time there was the real sob
+arising unmistakably in my voice.
+
+"Just stand still, and I'll call them to you," came a soft, deep voice out
+of the forest behind me, and behold, a man stood at my side!
+
+The man's name is Adam.
+
+"Now give me a cracker and watch 'em come," he said, as he came close to my
+side and took a biscuit from my surprised and nerveless hand. "Ah, but you
+are one beauty, aren't you?" he further remarked, and I was not positively
+sure whether he meant me or the Golden Bird until I saw that he had reached
+down and was stroking Mr. G. Bird with a delighted hand. "Chick, chick,
+chick!" he commanded, with a note that was not at all unlike the commanding
+one the Sultan had used a few minutes past, only more so, and in less than
+two seconds all those foolish hens were scrambling around our feet. In
+fact, the command in his voice had been so forcible that I myself had moved
+several feet nearer to him until I, too, was in the center of my
+scrambling, clucking Bird venture.
+
+I don't like beautiful men. I never did. I think that a woman ought to have
+all the beauty there is, and I feel that a man who has any is in some way
+dishonest, but I never before saw anything like that person who had come
+out of the woods to the rescue of my family fortune, and I simply stared at
+him as he stood with a fluff of seething white wings around his feet and
+towered against the green gray of an old tree that hung over the side of
+the road. He was tall and broad, but lithe and lovely like some kind of a
+woods thing, and heavy hair of the same brilliant burnished red that I had
+seen upon the back of a prize Rhode Island Red in the lovely water-color
+plates in my chicken book,--which had tempted me to buy "red" until I had
+read about the triumphs of the Leghorn "whites,"--waved close to his head,
+only ruffling just over his ears enough to hide the tips of them. His eyes
+were set so far back under their dark, heavy, red eyebrows that they seemed
+night-blue with their long black fringe of lashes. His face was square and
+strong and gentle, and the collar of his gray flannel shirt was open so
+that I could see that his head was set on his wide shoulders with lines
+like an old Greek masterpiece. Gray corduroy trousers were strapped around
+his waist by a wide belt made of some kind of raw-looking leather that was
+held together by two leather lacings, while on his feet were a kind of
+sandal shoes that appeared to be made of the same leather. He must have
+constructed both belt and shoes himself, and he hadn't any hat at all upon
+his crimson-gold thatch of hair. I looked at him so long that I had to look
+away, and then when I did I looked right back at him because I couldn't
+believe that he was true.
+
+"Now I'm going to pick them up gently, two at a time, tie their feet
+together with a piece of this string, and hand them to you to put inside
+the carriage. I'll catch the cock first, the handsome old sport," and as
+Pan spoke, he began to suit his actions to his words with amazing tact and
+skill. I shall always be glad that the first chicken I ever held in my arms
+was put into them gently by that woods man, and that it was the Golden Bird
+himself. "Put him in and shut the door, and he'll calm the ladies as you
+bring them to him," he commanded as he bent down and lifted two of the Bird
+brides and began to tie their feet together with a piece of cord he had
+taken from a deep pocket in the gray trousers.
+
+"Oh, thank you," I said with a depth of gratitude in my voice that I did
+not know I possessed. "You are the most wonderful man I ever saw--I mean
+that I ever saw with chickens," I said, ending the remark in an agony of
+embarrassment. "I don't know much about them. I mean chickens," I hastened
+to add, and made matters worse.
+
+"Oh, they are easy, when you get to know 'em, chickens--or men," he said
+kindly, without a spark in his eyes back of their black bushes. "Are they
+yours?"
+
+"They are all the property I have got in the world," I answered as I
+clasped the last pair of biddies to my breast, for while we had been
+holding our primitive conversation, I had been obeying his directions and
+loading the Birds into Grandmother Craddock's stately equipage. Anxiety
+shone from my eyes into his sympathetic ones.
+
+"Well, you'll be an heiress in no time with them to start you, with 'good
+management.' I never saw a finer lot," he said, as he walked to the door of
+the carriage with me, with the last pair of white Leghorn ladies in his
+arms.
+
+"But maybe I haven't got that management," I faltered, with my anxiety
+getting tearful in my words.
+
+"Oh, you'll learn," he said, with such heavenly soothing in his voice that
+I almost reached out my hands and clung to him as he settled the fussing
+poultry in the bottom of the carriage in such a way as to leave room for my
+feet among them. Mr. G. Bird was perched on the seat at my side and was
+craning his neck down and soothingly scolding his family. "How are you, Mr.
+Craddock?" Pan asked of Uncle Cradd's back, and by his question interrupted
+an argument that sounded, from the Greek phrases flying, like a battle on
+the walls of Troy.
+
+"Well, well, how are you, Adam?" exclaimed Uncle Cradd, as he turned around
+and greeted the woodsman with a smile of positive delight.
+
+I had known that man's name was Adam, but I don't know how I knew.
+
+"This is my brother, Mr. William Craddock, who's come home to me to live
+and die where he belongs, and that young lady is Nancy. Those chickens are
+just a whim of hers, and we have to humor her. Can we lift you as far as
+Riverfield?" Uncle Cradd made his introduction and delivered his invitation
+all in one breath.
+
+"I'm glad to meet you, sir, and I am grateful for your assistance in
+capturing my daughter's whims," said father, as he came partly out of his
+B.C. daze.
+
+As he took my hand into his slender, but very powerful grasp, that man had
+the impertinence to laugh into my eyes at my parent's double-entendre,
+which he had intended as a simple single remark.
+
+"No, thank you, sir; I've got to get across Paradise Ridge before sundown.
+The lambs are dropping fast over at Plunkett's, and I want to make sure
+those Southdown ewes are all right," he answered as he put my hand out of
+his, though I almost let it rebel and cling, and took for a second the
+Golden Bird's proud head into his palm.
+
+"I'll be over at Elmnest before your--your 'good judgment' needs mine," he
+said to me as softly as I think a mother must speak to a child as she
+unloosens clinging dependent fingers. As he spoke he shut the door of the
+old ark, and Uncle Cradd drove on, leaving him standing on the edge of the
+great woods looking after us.
+
+"Oh, I wish that man were going home with us, Mr. G. Bird, or we were going
+home with him," I said with a kind of terror of the unknown creeping over
+me. As I spoke I reached out and cuddled the Golden darling into the hollow
+of my arm. Some day I am going to travel to the East shore of Baltimore to
+the Rosecomb Poultry Farm to see the woman who raised the Golden Bird and
+cultivated such a beautiful confiding, and affectionate nature in him. He
+soothed me with a chuckle as he pecked playfully at my fingers and then
+called cheerfully down to the tethered white Ladies of Leghorn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+As we ambled towards the sun, which was setting over old Harpeth, the
+tallest humpbacked hill on Paradise Ridge, the Greek battle raged on the
+front seat and there was peace with anxiety in the back of the ancestral
+coach.
+
+As the wheels and the two old gentlemen rumbled and the Bird's family
+clucked and crooned, with only an occasional irritated squawk, I, for the
+first time since the landslide of our fortune, began to take real thought
+of the morrow.
+
+"Yes, landslide is a good name for what is happening to us, and I hope
+we'll slide or land on the home base, whatever is the correct term in the
+national game that Matthew has given up trying to teach me to enjoy," I
+said to myself as I settled down to look into our situation.
+
+I found that it was not at all astonishing that father had lost all the
+fortune that my mother had left him and me when she died three years ago.
+It was astonishing that the old dreamer had kept it as long as he had, and
+it was only because most of it had been in land and he had from the first
+lived serenely and comfortably on nice flat slices of town property cut off
+whenever he needed it. He had been a dreamer when he came out of the
+University of Virginia ten years after the war, and it had been the tragedy
+of Uncle Cradd's life that he had not settled down with him on the very
+broad, but very poor, ancestral acres of Elmnest, to slice away with him at
+that wealth instead of letting himself be captured in all his poetic beauty
+at a dance in Hayesville by a girl whose father had made her half a million
+dollars in town land deals. Uncle Cradd's resentment had been bitter, and
+as he was the senior of his twin brother by several hours, he demanded that
+father sell him his half of Elmnest, and for it had paid his entire fortune
+outside of the bare acres. In poetic pride father had acceded to his
+demand, lent the money thrust upon him to the first speculator who got to
+him, and the two brothers had settled themselves down twenty miles apart in
+the depths of a feud, to eat their hearts out for each other. The rich man
+sought a path to the heart of the poor man, but was repulsed until the day
+after the spectacular failure of his phosphate company had penetrated into
+the wilds of little Riverfield, and immediately Uncle Cradd had hitched up
+the moth-eaten string in his old stables and come into town for us, and in
+father's sweet old heart there was never an idea of not, as he put it,
+"going home." I had never seen Elmnest, but I knew something of the
+situation, and that is where the Golden Bird arrived on the situation. The
+morning after our decision to return to the land--a decision in which I had
+borne no part but a sympathetic one after I had listened half the night to
+father's raptures over Uncle Cradd as a Greek scholar with whom one would
+wish to spend one's last days--the February copy of "The Woman's Review"
+arrived, and on the first page was an article from a woman who earns five
+thousand dollars a year with the industrious hen on a little farm of ten
+acres. There were lovely pictures of her with her feathered family, and I
+decided that what a woman with the limited experience of a head
+stenographer in a railroad office could do, I, with my wider scope of
+travel and culture, could more than double on three hundred acres of land
+in the Harpeth Valley. Some day I'm going to see that woman and I'm going
+to stop by and speak sternly to the editor of "The Woman's Review" on my
+way.
+
+"Mr. G. Bird," I began as I reached this point and I saw that we were
+arriving in the heart of civilization, which was the square of a quaint
+little old town. From a motor-car acquaintance, I knew this to be
+Riverfield, but I had never even stopped because of the family pride
+involved in the feud now dead. "Mr. Bird," I repeated, "I am afraid I am
+up against it, and I hope you'll stand by me." He answered me by preening a
+breast feather and winking one of his bright eyes as Uncle Cradd stopped
+the ancient steeds in the center of the square, before a little old brick
+building that bore three signs over its tumble-down porch. They were:
+"Silas Beesley, Grocer," "U.S. Post-Office," and "Riverfield Bank and Trust
+Co."
+
+"Hey, Si, here's William come home!" called Uncle Cradd, as a negro boy
+with a broad grin stood at the heads of the slow old horses, who, I felt
+sure, wouldn't have moved except under necessity before the judgment day.
+In less time than I can take to tell it father descended literally into the
+arms of his friends. About half a dozen old farmers, some in overalls and
+some in rusty black broadcloth the color of Uncle Cradd's, poured out of
+the wide door of the business building before described, and they acted
+very much as I have seen the boys at Yale or Princeton act after a success
+or defeat on the foot-ball field. They hugged father and they slapped him
+on the back and they shook his hand as if it were not of human,
+sixty-year-old flesh and blood. Then they introduced a lot of stalwart
+young farmers to him, each of whom gave father hearty greetings, but
+refrained from even a glance in my direction as I sat enthroned on high on
+the faded old cushions and waited for an introduction, which at last Uncle
+Cradd remembered to give me.
+
+"This is Miss Nancy Craddock, gentlemen, named after my mother, and she's
+going to beat out the Bend in her chicken raising, which she's brought
+along with her. Come over, youngsters, and look her over. The fire in the
+parlor don't burn more than a half cord of wood on a Sunday, and you can
+come over Saturday afternoon and cut it against the Sabbath, with a welcome
+to any one of the spare rooms and a slab of Rufus's spare rib and a couple
+of both breakfast and supper muffins." All of the older men laughed at this
+sweeping invitation, and all the younger greeted it with ears that became
+instantly crimson. I verily believe they would one and all have fled and
+left me sitting there yet if a diversion had not arrived in the person of
+Mrs. Silas, who came bustling out of the door of the grocery or post-office
+or bank; whichever it is called, is according to your errand there. Mrs. Si
+was tall, and almost as broad as the door itself, with the rosiest cheeks
+and the bluest eyes I had ever beheld, and they crinkled with loveliness
+around their corners. She had white water-waves that escaped their decorous
+plastering into waving little tendril curls, and her mouth was as curled
+and red-lipped and dimpled as a girl's. In a twinkling of those blue eyes I
+fell out of the carriage into a pair of strong, soft, tender arms covered
+with stiff gray percale, and received two hearty kisses, one on each cheek.
+
+"God bless you, honeybunch, and I'm glad William has brought you home at
+last, the rascal." As she hugged me she reached out a strong hand and gave
+father first a good shake by his shoulder and then by his hand.
+
+"Fine girl, eh, Mary?" answered father as he returned the shoulder shake
+with a pat on the broad gray percale back, and retained the strong hand in
+his, with a frank clinging.
+
+I wondered if--
+
+"She's her Aunt Mary's blessed child, and I will have her making riz
+biscuits like old Madam Craddock's black Sue for you two boys in less than
+a week," she answered him, with a laugh that somehow sounded a bit dewy.
+
+"Oh, do you know about chickens, Mrs.--I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked as I
+clung to the hand to which father was not clinging.
+
+"Bless my heart, what's that I see setting up on old Madam Craddock's
+cushions? Is it a rooster or a dream bird?" she answered me by exclaiming
+as she caught sight of Mr. G. Bird sitting in lonely state, but as good as
+gold, upon the rose-leather cushions. "I thought I feathered out the finest
+chickens in the Harpeth Valley, but this one isn't human, you might say,"
+and as she spoke she shook off father and me, and approached the carriage
+and peered in with the reverence of a real poultry artist. "Bless my
+heart!" she again exclaimed.
+
+"Those are just Miss Nancy's whims to take the place of her card-routs and
+sinful dancing habits," said Uncle Cradd, with a great and indulgent
+amusement as all the little crowd of native friends gathered around to look
+at the Bird family.
+
+"Say, that rooster ought to have been met with a brass band like they did
+Mr. Cummins' horse, Lightheels, after he won all those cups up in the races
+at Cincinnati," said the tallest of the young farmers, whose ears had begun
+to assume their normal color.
+
+"And a sight more right he has to such a honor, Bud Beesley," replied Aunt
+Mary, with spirit, as she stroked the proud head of the Golden Bird. "It
+takes hens and women all their days to collect the money men spend on
+race-horses sometimes, my son."
+
+"Well, Mary, I reckon you aren't alluding to this pair of spanking grays
+I've got; but in case you are getting personal to them, I think we had
+better begin to go. Come, get in with the Whim family, Nancy, and let's be
+traveling. It's near on to a mile over a mighty rough road to the house
+from the gate here. Everybody come and see us." As he spoke Uncle Cradd
+assisted me with ceremony into the chariot beside the Golden hero of the
+hour, and started the ancient steeds into a tall old gate right opposite
+the bank-store-post-office. As he drove away something like warm tears
+misted across my eyes as I looked back and saw all the goodwill and
+friendliness in the eye of the farmer friends who watched our departure.
+
+"That, Ann, is the salt of the earth, and I don't see how I consumed life
+so long without it," said father as he turned, and looked at me with a
+sparkle in his mystic gray eyes that I had never seen there when we were
+seated at table with the mighty or making our bow in broadcloth and fine
+linen in some of the palaces of the world. I didn't know what it was then,
+but I do now; it is a land-love that lies deep in the heart of every man
+who is born out in meadows and fields. They never get over it and sometimes
+transmit it even to the second generation. I felt it stir and run in my
+blood as we rumbled and bumped up the long avenue of tall old elm-trees
+that led through deep fields which were even then greening with blue-grass
+and from which arose a rich loamy fragrance, and finally arrived at the
+most wonderful old brick house that I had ever seen in all of my life; it
+seemed to even my much traveled eyes in some ways the most wonderful abode
+for human beings I had ever beheld. It was not the traditional
+white-pillared mansion. It was more wonderful. The bricks had aged a rich,
+red purple, and were rimmed and splotched with soft green and gray moss
+under traceries of vines that were beginning to put out rich russet buds.
+The windows were filled with tiny diamond panes of glass, which glittered
+in the gables from the last rays of the sun setting over Old Harpeth, and
+the broad, gray shingled roof hovered down over the wide porch which would
+have sheltered fifty people safely. A flagstone walk and stone steps led up
+from the drive, seemingly right into the wide front door, which had small,
+diamond-paned, heavily shuttered windows in it, and queer holes on each
+side.
+
+"To shoot through in case of marauding Indians," answered Uncle Cradd to my
+startled question, which had sprung from a suspicion that must have been
+dictated by prenatal knowledge. As I entered the homestead of my fathers I
+felt that I had slipped back into the colonial age of America, and I found
+myself almost in a state of terror. The wide old hall, the heavy-beamed
+ceiling of which was so low that you felt again hovered, was lighted by
+only one candle, though a broad path of firelight lay across the dark
+polished floor from the room on the left, where appeared old Rufus
+enveloped in a large apron no whiter than the snowy kinks on his old head.
+
+"Time you has worship, Mas' Cradd, my muffins and spare ribs will be done,"
+he said after he had bestowed a grand bow first upon father and then upon
+me, with a soft-voiced greeting of "sarvant, little Mis', and sarvant, Mas'
+William."
+
+"It is fitting that we render unto the Lord thankfulness for your return
+home with Nancy, your child, William, in the first moments of your arrival.
+Come!" commanded Uncle Cradd, and he led us into a huge room as low
+ceilinged and dark-toned as the hall. In it there was only the firelight
+and another dim candle placed on a small table beside a huge old book. With
+the surety of long habit father walked straight to a large chair that was
+drawn close to the hearth on the side opposite the table, behind which was
+another large chair of exactly the same pattern of high-backed dignity, and
+seated himself. Then he drew me down into a low chair beside him, and I
+lifted up my hands, removed my hat, and was at last come home from a huge
+and unreal world outside.
+
+As I sat and gazed from the dark room through a large old window, which was
+swung open on heavy hinges to allow the sap-scented breeze to drift in and
+fan the fire of lingering winter, out into an old garden with
+brick-outlined walks and climbing bare rose vines upon which was beginning
+to be poured the silver enchantment of a young moon, Uncle Cradd, in his
+deep old voice, which was like the notes given out by an ancient violin,
+began to read a chapter from his old Book which began with the exhortation,
+"Let brotherly love continue," and laid down a course of moral conduct that
+seemed so impossible that I sat spellbound to the last words, "Grace be
+with you all. Ahmen."
+
+Then I knelt beside father, with old Rufus close behind our chairs, and was
+for the first time in my life lifted on the wings of prayer and carried off
+up somewhere I hadn't been before. As Uncle Cradd's sonorous words of love
+and rejoicing over our return rolled forth in the twilight, I crouched
+against father's shoulder, and I think the spirit of my Grandmother
+Craddock, whom I had heard indulging in a Methodist form of vocal rejoicing
+which is called a shout, was about to manifest itself through me when I was
+brought to earth and to my feet by a long, protracted, and alarmed appeal
+sent forth in the voice of the Golden Bird.
+
+"Keep us and protect us through the night with Your grace. Ahmen! Why
+didn't you put those chickens out of the way of skunks and weasels, Rufus,
+you old scoundrel," rolled out Uncle Cradd's deep voice, dropping with
+great harmony from the sublime to the domestic.
+
+Then, with Rufus at my heels, I literally flew through the back door of the
+house towards the sound of distress that had come from that direction. In
+front of a rambling old barn, which was silvered by the crescent that hung
+over its ridge-pole, stood the chariot, and at its door, with Mr. G. Bird
+in his arms, I saw that man Adam.
+
+"He didn't recognize my first touch," came across the moonbeams in a voice
+as fluty as the original Pan's, and mingled with friendly chuckles and
+clucks from the entire Bird family as they felt the caress of long hands
+among them. I was so ruffled myself that I felt in need of soothing; so I
+came across the light and into the black shadow of the old coach.
+
+"Oh, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come!" I exclaimed.
+
+After my ardent exclamation of welcome to Pan I stood still for fear he
+would vanish into the moonlight, because with his litheness and the eerie
+locks of hair that even in the silvering radiance showed a note of crimson
+cresting over his ears, he looked exactly as if he had come out of the
+hollow in some oak-tree.
+
+"I thought you might feel that way about it," he answered me, or rather I
+think that is what he said, because he was crooning to me and the Ladies
+Bird at the same time, and with a mixture of epitaphs and endearments that
+I didn't care to untangle. "There, there, lovely lady, don't be scared; it
+is going to be all right," he soothed, as he lifted one of the fluffy
+biddies and tucked her under his arm.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad you think so," I claimed the remark by exclaiming, while
+she made her claim by a contented little cluck.
+
+"Now don't be bothered, sweetheart," he again said, as he picked up another
+of the Ladies Bird and turned towards the huge old tumble-down barn that
+was yawning a black midnight out into the gray moonlight. "Let's all go
+into the barn and settle down to live happily together ever after."
+
+"I think that will be lovely," I answered, while beautiful Mrs. Bird made
+her reply with a consenting cluck. I never supposed I would make an
+affirmative answer to a domestic proposal that was at least uncertain of
+intent, but then I also never dreamed of being in the position of guardian
+to eleven head of prize live stock, and I think anything I did or said
+under the circumstances was excusable.
+
+"Don't you want to come with me and bring the cock with you. Old Rufus
+wouldn't touch one of them for a gold rock," he asked, and I felt slightly
+aggrieved when I discovered that I was to know when I was being addressed
+by a lack of any term of endearment, though the caressing flutiness of
+Adam's voice was the same to me as to any one of the Ladies Leghorn.
+
+"Naw, Marster, chickens am my hoodoo. To tetch one makes my flesh crawl
+like they was walking on my grave, and if little Mis' will permit of me, I
+wanter git back to see to the browning of my muffins ginst the time Mas'
+Cradd rars at me fer his supper," and without waiting for the consent he
+had asked, old Rufus shuffled hurriedly back into the house.
+
+"I'll bring Mr. Golden Bird. I adore the creeps his feathers give me," I
+said as I reached in the coach and took the Sultan in my arms. He gave not
+a single note of remonstrance, but I suppose it was imagination that made
+me think that he fluffed himself into my embrace with friendly joy.
+
+"Come on, let's put them for to-night over in the feed-room. There, ladies,
+did you ever see a greater old barn than this?" As he spoke to us he led
+the way with four of the admiring and obedient Ladies, in his arms, while
+the fifth, who was I, followed him into the deep, purple, hay-scented
+darkness.
+
+"I never did see anything like it," I answered, while only one of the
+Leghorn ladies gave a sleepy cluck of assent to their part of the question.
+
+I really did have a thrill of pure joy in that old barn. It wasn't like
+anything I had ever seen before, and was as far removed from a garage as is
+a brown-hearted chestnut burr from a souffle of maroons served on a silver
+dish. I could hear the moth-eaten string of steeds munching noisily over at
+one end of the huge darkness, and the odor that arose from their repast was
+of corn and not of suffocating gasoline. Tall weeds and long frames with
+teeth in them, which gave them the appearance of huge alligator mouths
+yawning from the dusk to snap me, pressed close on each side. Straps and
+ropes and harness were draped from the beams and along the walls, and the
+combined aroma of corn and hay and leather and horses seemed an inspiration
+to a lusty breath.
+
+"There, sweeties, is a nice smooth bin for you to go to bed on," said Adam
+as he set the Ladies Leghorn one by one from his arms on the edge of a long
+narrow box that was piled high with corn. "Now you stay here with them
+until I bring the rest. Put your Golden Bird down beside the biddies, and
+I'll bring the others to put on the other side of him to roost, and in the
+morning he can begin scratching for a happy and united family." With which
+command Pan disappeared into the purple darkness and left me alone in the
+snapping monster shadows with only the sleepy Golden Bird for company. The
+Bird shook himself after being deposited beside the half-portion of his
+family, puffed himself up, sank his long neck into his shoulders, and
+evidently went to sleep. I shivered up close to him and looked over my
+shoulder into the blackness behind the teeth and then didn't look again
+until I heard the soft pad of the weird leather shoes behind me.
+
+"Now all's shipshape for the night," said Pan as he spread out his armful
+of feathers into a bunchy line on the edge of the bin. "Just throw them
+about two double handfulls of mixed corn and wheat down in the hay litter
+on the floor at daybreak and keep them shut up and scratching until you are
+sure none of them are going to lay. From the red of their combs I judge
+they will all be laying in a few days."
+
+"At daybreak?" I faltered.
+
+"Yes; they ought to be got to work as soon as they hop off the roost,"
+answered Pan, as he spread a little more of the hay on the floor in front
+of the perch of the Bird family.
+
+"How do I know it--I mean daybreak?" I asked, with eagerness and
+hesitation both in my voice, as Pan started padding out through the
+monster-haunted darkness towards the square of silver light beyond the huge
+door. As I asked my question I followed close at his heels.
+
+"I'll be going through to Plunketts and I'll call you, like this." As we
+came from the shadows into the moonlight beside the coach, Adam paused and
+gave three low weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the
+sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung. "I'll call twice,
+and then you answer if you are awake. If not, I'll call again."
+
+"I'll be awake," I asserted positively. "Won't you--that is, must I fix--"
+
+"That's all for to-night, and good night," he answered me with a laugh that
+was as reedy as the brisk wind in the trees. In a second he was padding
+away from me into the trees beyond the garden as swiftly as I suppose
+jaguars and lithe lions travel.
+
+"Oh, don't you want some supper?" I called into the moonlight, even
+running a few steps after him.
+
+"Parched corn in my pocket--lambs," came fluting back to me from the
+shadows.
+
+"Supper am sarved, little Mis'," Rufus announced from the hack door, as I
+stood still looking and listening into the night.
+
+"Uncle Cradd," I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old
+gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming
+silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life,
+"who is that remarkable man?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+"Si Beesley? Spare rib, dear?" was his disappointing but hospitable, answer
+in two return questions to my anxious inquiries about the Pan who had come
+out of the woods at my need.
+
+"No; I mean--mean, didn't you call him Adam?"
+
+"Nobody knows. Now, William, a spare rib and a muffin is real nourishment
+after the nightingale's tongues and snails you've been living on for
+twenty-odd years, isn't it?" As he spoke Uncle Cradd beamed on father, who
+was eating with the first show of real pleasure in food since we had had to
+send Henri back to New York, after the crash, weeping with all his
+French-cook soul at leaving us after fifteen years' service.
+
+"I have always enjoyed that essay of Charles Lamb's on roast pig, Cradd,"
+answered father as he took a second muffin. "I know that Lamb used to bore
+you, Cradd, but honestly now, doesn't his materialism seem--"
+
+"Oh, Uncle Cradd, please tell me about that Adam man before you and father
+disappear into the eighteenth century," I pleaded, as I handed two cups of
+steaming coffee to Rufus to pass my two elderly savants.
+
+"There is nothing to tell, Nancy child," answered Uncle Cradd, with an
+indulgent smile as he peered at me over his glasses. "Upon my word,
+William, Nancy is the living image of mother when we first remember her,
+isn't she? You are very beautiful, my dear."
+
+"I know it," I answered hurriedly and hardly aware of what I was saying;
+"but I want to know where he came from, please, Uncle Cradd."
+
+"Well, as near as I can remember he came out of the woods a year ago and
+has been in and out helping about the farms here in Harpeth Valley ever
+since. He never eats or sleeps anywhere, and he's a kind of wizard with
+animals, they say. And, William, he does know his Horace. Just last week he
+appeared with a little leather-covered volume, and for four mortal hours
+we--"
+
+"They says dat red-haided peckerwoods goes to the devil on Fridays, and
+Mas' Adam he cured my hawgs with nothing but a sack full of green cabbage
+heads in January, he did," said Rufus, as he rolled his big black eyes and
+mysteriously shook his old head with its white kinks. "No physic a-tall,
+jest cabbage and a few turnips mixed in the mash. Yes, m'm, dey does go to
+the devil of a Friday, red-haided peckerwoods, dey does."
+
+"By the way, Cradd, I want you to see a little volume of the Odes I picked
+up in London last year. The dealer was a robber, and my dealer didn't want
+me to buy, but I thought of that time you and I--"
+
+"Not one of the Cantridge edition?"
+
+"Yes, and I want you--"
+
+During all the rest of supper I sat and communed with my own self while
+father and Uncle Cradd banqueted with the Immortals.
+
+Even after we went back into the low-ceilinged old living-room, which was
+now lighted by two candles placed close together on a wonderful old
+mahogany table before the fire, one of the dignified chairs drawn up on
+each side, with my low seat between, I was busily mapping out a course of
+action that was to begin with my dawn signal.
+
+"I'd like to get into the--trunk as soon as possible. There is something I
+want to look up in my chicken book," I said before I seated myself in the
+midst of one of the battles that raged around Ilium.
+
+"Nancy, my dear, you will find that Rufus has arranged your Grandmother
+Craddock's room for you, and Mary Beesley came over to see that all was in
+order," said Uncle Cradd, coming and taking my face into his long, lean old
+hands. "God bless you, my dear, and keep you in His care here in the home
+of your forefathers. Good-night!" After an absent-minded kiss from father I
+was dismissed with a Sanskrit blessing from somewhere in the valley of the
+Euphrates up into my bedroom in the valley of Old Harpeth.
+
+If I had discovered the shadow of tradition in the rest of the old house, I
+walked into the very depths of them as I entered the bedroom of my
+foremothers. Deep crimson coals of fire were in a squat fireplace, and a
+last smoldering log of some kind of fragrant wood broke into fragments and
+sent up a little gust of blue and gold flame as if in celebration of my
+arrival. There was the remnant of a candle burning on a small table beside
+a bed that was very near, if not quite, five feet high, beside which were
+steps for the purposes of ascension. All the rest of the room was in a blur
+of lavender-scented darkness, and I only saw that both side walls folded
+down and were lit with the deep old gables, through the open windows of
+which young moon rays were struggling to help light the situation for me.
+As I looked at that wide, puffy old bed, with a blur of soft colors in its
+quilt and the valance around its posts and tester, I suddenly became as
+utterly weary as a child who sees its mother's arms outstretched at
+retiring time. I don't know how I got out of my clothes and into my lace
+and ribbons, with only the flickering candle and the dying log to see by,
+but in less time than I ever could have dreamed might be consumed in the
+processes of going to bed I climbed the little steps and dived into the
+soft bosom of the old four-poster.
+
+"God bless me and keep me in His care here in my grandmother's bed," I
+murmured after the invocation of Uncle Cradd, and that is all I knew after
+the first delicious sink and soft huddling of my body between sheets that
+felt as if they must be rich silk and smelled of old lavender.
+
+And then came a dream--a most lovely dream. I was at the opera in Gale
+Beacon's box, and Mr. G. Bird was out on the stage singing that glorious
+coo in the aria in Saint-Saens' "Samson and Delilah," and I was trying to
+answer him. Suddenly I was wide awake sitting up in a billowed softness,
+while moonlight of a different color was sifting in through the gable
+windows and the most lovely calling notes were coming in on its beams.
+Without a moment's hesitation I answered in about six notes of that Delilah
+song which was the only sound ready in my mind. Then I listened and I am
+not sure that I heard a reedy laugh under my window as just the two notes
+succeeding the ones I had given forth came in on the dawn beams. Then all
+was as still and quiet as the hush of midnight.
+
+In about two seconds I had vaulted forth from between the high posts,
+splashed into a funny old wooden tub bound together with brass rims,
+whirled my black mop into a knot, slipped into the modish boots, corduroys,
+and a linen smock, and was running out into the peculiar moon-dawn with the
+swiftness of a boy.
+
+But I was too late! The silver-moon sky was growing rosy over behind the
+barn as I peered about, and a mist was rolling away from between the trees,
+but not a soul in all the world was awake, and I was alone.
+
+"Did he call me?" I asked of myself under my breath. And the answer I got
+was from the Golden Bird, who sent a long, triumphant, eager "salutation to
+the dawn" from out the shadows of the barn.
+
+Eagerly I flew to him, and the minute I entered the apartment of the Bird
+family I discovered that I had been only half dreaming about my early
+morning opera. Pan had come and gone. Upon the door was pinned a piece of
+torn brown wrapping-paper upon which I found these penciled words:
+
+    Give them about two quarts of warm meal mash, into which you put
+    some ground turnips at noon. Better build about four nests in the
+    dark under the bin, and be sure to disinfect them by white-washing
+    inside and out. Put in clean hay. Dust all the beauties on their
+    heads and under their wings with wood ashes in which you put a
+    little of the powder you'll find in a piece of this paper in the
+    right-hand corner of the bin. They'll want a good feed of ground
+    grain at three o'clock. Get copperas from Rufus to put in their
+    water, and I'll let you know later what else to do. Salutations!
+
+    ADAM
+
+"I'm glad I got up so early if that's the day's program," I gasped to
+myself as I leaned against the bin from which the Golden Bird had already
+alighted and was commanding the Ladies Leghorn to descend--a command which
+they were obeying one at a time with outspread white wings that were
+handled with the height of awkwardness. "But I'll do it all if it kills
+me," I added, with my head up, as I began to scatter some of the big white
+grains that I knew to be corn and which, by lifting lids and peering into
+huge slanting top boxes set against the wall, I discovered along with a lot
+of other small brown seed stuff that I knew must be wheat. I was glad that
+I had remembered that Adam had called the room the feed-room so I had
+known where to look.
+
+It was so perfectly exciting to see all those fluffy white members of my
+family fortune scratching and clucking about my feet that I prolonged the
+process of the feeding by scattering only a few grains at a time until
+great shafts of golden morning sun were thrusting themselves in through the
+dim dusk and cobweb-veiled windows.
+
+"Morning, little Mis'! I axes yo' parding fer not having breakfast 'fore
+sun-up fer you, but they didn't never any Craddock ladies want theirn
+before nine o'clock before, they didn't," came Rufus's voice in solemn
+words of apology uttered in tones of serious reproof. As he spoke he stood
+as far from the door of the feed-room as possible and eyed the scratching
+Bird family with the deepest disapproval. "Feed-room ain't no place fer
+chickens; they oughter make they living on bugs and worms and sich."
+
+"These chickens are--are different, Rufus, and--and so am I," I answered
+him with dignity. "Call me when the gentlemen are ready to breakfast with
+me."
+
+"They talked until most daylight, and I knows 'em well enough to not cook
+fer 'em until after ten o'clock. They's gentlemen, they is." The tones of
+his voice were perfectly servile, though it was plain to see that his
+mental processes were not.
+
+"All right, I'll eat mine now, Rufus, and then I want you to get me a--a
+hammer and some nails. Also a bucket of whitewash," I said as I closed the
+door upon the Birds and preceded him to the house.
+
+"Oh, my Lawd-a-mussy!" he exclaimed as he dived into the refuge of the
+kitchen, completely routed, to appear with my breakfast upon his tray and
+with such dignity in his mien that it was pathetic. I was merciful while I
+consumed the meal which was an exact repetition of the supper of the ribs
+of the hog and muffins and coffee; then I threw another fit into him, to
+quote from Matthew at his worst in the way of diction.
+
+"Please set a bucket of the wood ashes from the living-room fire out at
+the barn for me, Rufus," I commanded him with pleasant firmness.
+
+"Yes, Madam," was the answer I got in a tone of cold despair. It was thus
+that the feud with my family traditions was established.
+
+"Also, Rufus, please bring the saw with the hammer and the nails," was my
+last hand-grenade as I departed out the back door to the barn. From the old
+clock standing against the wall in the back hall I discovered the hour to
+be exactly seven-thirty, and I felt that I had what would seem like a week
+ahead of me before the setting of the sun. However, I was wrong in my
+judgment, for time fairly fled from me, and it was nine o'clock by my
+platinum wrist-watch before I had more than got one very wobbly-looking box
+nailed together on the floor of the barn, and I was deep in both pride and
+exhaustion.
+
+"I knew I could do it, but I didn't believe it," I was remarking to myself
+in great congratulations when a shadow fell across the light from the door.
+I looked up and, behold, Mrs. Silas Beesley loomed up against the sun and
+seemed to shine with equal refulgence to my delighted eyes! In her hand she
+held a plate covered with a snowy napkin, and her blue eyes danced with
+delighted astonishment.
+
+"Well, well, Nancy!" she exclaimed, as she seated herself upon a bench by
+the door and began to fan herself with a corner of a snowy kerchief that
+crossed her ample bosom. "Looks like you have begun sawing and nailing at
+the Craddock family estate pretty early in the action though it's none too
+soon, and mighty glad I am to see you do it while there is still a little
+odd lumber left. I've always said that it's women folks that prop a family
+and it will soon tumble without 'em. I am so glad you've come, honeybunch,
+that tears are laughing themselves out of the corner of my eyes." This
+time the white kerchief was dabbed over the keen blue eyes.
+
+"Is it all--very--very bad, Mrs.--I mean, Aunt Mary?" I asked, as I laid
+down my dull-toothed instrument for the dissection of the plank, and sank
+cross-legged on the barn floor in front of her.
+
+"Oh, it might be worse," she answered as she smiled again with resolution.
+"Rufus has eleven nice hogs and feed enough for them until summer, thanks
+to the help of Adam in tending the ten-acre river-bottom field, which they
+made produce more than any one else in the river bend got off of fifty.
+Nobody can take the house, because it is hitched on to you with entailment,
+and though the croppers have skimmed off all the cream of the land, the
+clay bottom of it is obliged to be yours. Now that you and William have
+come with a little money the fields can all be restored. Adam will help you
+like he did Hiram Wade down the road there. It only cost him about ten
+dollars to the acre.
+
+"But--but father and I--that is, Aunt Mary, you know father has lost all
+his property and Uncle Cradd assured us that--that there was plenty for us
+all at Elmnest," I said in a faltering tone of voice as a feeling of
+descending tragedy struck into my heart.
+
+"Cradd and Rufus have lived on hog, head, heels, and tail for over a year,
+with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for.
+I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with
+those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse
+sewed with gold thread with you. I said to Silas as he put out the lamp
+last night, 'The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the
+track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of
+which Moseby Craddock is one.' 'Why, she's so fine she can't eat eggs outen
+chickens that costs less than maybe a hundred dollars the dozen,' answered
+Silas to me as he put out the cat."
+
+"They cost eight hundred and fifty dollars and they are all I have got in
+the world. Father gave up everything, and I sold my clothes and the cars to
+buy back his library and--and the chickens," I said with the terror
+pressing still more heavily down upon me.
+
+"Well, I shouldn't call them chickens spilled milk. Just listen at 'em!"
+And just as we had arrived at the point of desperation in our conversation
+a diversion occurred in the way of two loud cacklings from the feed-room
+and the most ringing and triumphant crow that I am sure ever issued from
+the throat of a thoroughbred cock. "'Tain't possible for 'em to have laid
+this quick after traveling," said Aunt Mary, but she was almost as fleet as
+I was in her progress to the feed-room door. And behold!
+
+"Well, what do you think about that, right out of the crate just last
+night, no nests nor nothing!" she exclaimed as we both paused and gazed at
+two huge white eggs in hastily scratched nests beside the bin over which
+two of the very most lovely white Leghorn ladies were proudly standing and
+clucking, while between them Mr. G. Bird was crowing with such evident
+pride that I was afraid he would split his crimson throat. All the other
+white Birds were clucking excitedly as if issuing hen promissory notes upon
+their futures.
+
+"They're omens of good luck, bless the Lord, Honeybunch. Pick 'em right
+up!" exclaimed Mrs. Silas.
+
+"Oh, they are warm!" I cried as I picked the two treasures up with reverent
+hands and cuddled them against the linen of the smock over my breast in
+which my heart was beating high with excitement. And as I held them there
+all threat of life vanished never to return, no matter through what
+vicissitudes the Golden Bird family and I were to pass.
+
+"You can eat these, and next week you can begin to save for a setting as
+soon as you can get a hen ready. I'll lend you the first one of mine that
+broods," said Mrs. Silas as she took both the beautiful treasures into one
+of her large hands with what I thought was criminal carelessness, but
+didn't like to say so.
+
+"I've ordered a three-hundred-egg incubator for them," I said proudly, as I
+gently took the warm treasures back into my hand. "Incubators are so much
+more sanitary and intelligent than hens," I added with all the surety of
+the advertisement for the mechanical hen which I had answered with
+thirty-five dollars obtained from the sale of the last fluffy petticoat I
+had hoped to retain, but which I gave up gladly after reading the
+advertisement. Two most lovely chemises had gone for the two brooders that
+were to accompany the incubator, and it seemed hard to think that I would
+have to wait ten days to receive the fruits of my feminine sacrifice from
+the slow shipping service of the railroad.
+
+"Don't ever say that again, Nancy! Hens have more genuine wisdom growing
+at the roots of their pin feathers than most women display during the span
+of their entire lives, and they make very much better mothers," reproved
+Aunt Mary, with sweet firmness. "Just you wait and see which brings out
+your prize birds, the wooden box or the hen. When men invent something with
+a mother's heart, they had better name it angel and admit that the kingdom
+has come. Bless my soul; these biscuits I brought over for you-all's
+breakfast are stone-cold!"
+
+"I've had my breakfast a half a day ago," I answered. "You go in and start
+father and Uncle Cradd off with the biscuits while I finish the nest
+and--and do some more things for my family fortune."
+
+"Child, if you attempt to do the things that Adam wants you to do for and
+with live stock you may see miracles being hatched out and born, but you'll
+be too worn out to notice 'em. Trap nests indeed! I've got to have some
+time to make my water waves and offer daily prayer!" And with this
+ejaculation of good-natured indignation, evidently at the memory of sundry
+and various poultry prods, Mrs. Silas betook herself to the house with a
+beautiful and serene dignity. As she went she stopped to break a sprig from
+a huge old lilac that was beginning to burst its brown buds and to put up
+half a yard of rambler that trailed across the path with its treacherous
+thorns.
+
+"Your lilacs are breaking scent already," she called back to me over her
+shoulder.
+
+A woman can experience no greater sensation of joy than that which she
+feels when she first realizes that she is the mistress of a lilac bush.
+Neither her debut dance nor her first proposal of sentiment equals it. It
+is the same way about the first egg she gathers with her own hands; the
+sensation is indescribable.
+
+"I'll do all the things he says do for you and the family, Mr. G. Bird, if
+it kills me, as it probably will," I said with resolution as I drove a
+last wobbly nail into the first nest, and took up the saw to again attack
+the odds and ends of old plank I had collected on the barn floor. "If I can
+make one nest in two hours, I can make two more in four more, and then I
+will have time for the rest of the things," I assured myself as I again
+looked at my wrist-watch, and began to saw with my knee holding the tough
+old plank in place across a rickety box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It is beautiful how sometimes deserving courage is rewarded if it just goes
+on deserving long enough. After about an hour's hand-to-saw bout with the
+old plank I was just chewing through the last inch of the last of the four
+sides of nest number two when I suddenly stopped and listened. Far away to
+the front of the house I heard hot oaths being uttered by the engine in a
+huge racing-machine with a powerful chug with which I was quite familiar.
+While I listened, the motor in agony gave a snort as it bounded over some
+kind of obstruction and in two seconds, as I stood saw in hand, with not
+enough time to wipe the sweat of toil from my brow, the huge blue machine
+swept around the corner of the house, brought up beside the family coach,
+which was still standing in front of the barn, and Matthew flung himself
+out of it and to my side.
+
+"Holy smokers, Ann, but you look good in that get-up!" he exclaimed as he
+regarded me with the delight with which a person might greet a friend or
+relative whom he had long considered dead or lost. "Why, you look just as
+if you had stepped right out of the 'Elite Review.' And the saw, too, makes
+a good note of human interest."
+
+"Well, it's chicken interest and not human, Matthew Berry," I said,
+answering his levity with spirit. "And I'm sorry I can't be at home for
+your amusement to-day, but my chickens are laying while I wait, and the
+least I can do is to get these nests ready for 'em. You'll excuse me, won't
+you, and go in to talk with father and Uncle Cradd?"
+
+"They're not producing dividends already, are they, Ann? Why, you only
+started the Consolidated Egg Co. yesterday!" exclaimed Matthew, with
+insulting doubt of my veracity in his voice.
+
+"Look there!" I said, as I pointed to my two large pearls, which I had
+carefully put in the soft felt hat I had purchased to go with the smocks
+for fifteen dollars at Goertz's.
+
+"Well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed Matthew, with real
+astonishment, as he sat down on his heels and took the two treasures into
+his highly manicured hands. "Gee, they are right hot off the bat!" he
+exclaimed, as he detected some of the warmth still left in them, I suppose.
+
+"Yes, and I've got to get these nests done right away so as to be ready to
+catch the rest of them," I said and began to saw furiously, as if I were
+constructing a bucket to catch a deluge.
+
+"Say, gimme the saw, Ann, and you get the fodder and things to put in the
+bottom of them to keep them from smashing as they come," said Matthew, as
+he flung off his coat, jammed his motor-cap on the back of his head, and
+took the saw from my unresisting hand.
+
+"I'll get the whitewash and whiten them as you finish them," I said, as I
+hurriedly consulted the torn piece of wrapping-paper I took from one of
+the huge pockets of my smock.
+
+"All right, but you had better hump yourself, for I believe I'm going to be
+some carpenter. This saw has a kind of affinity feeling to my hand," said
+Matthew, as he put his foot on one end of the plank and began to make the
+saw fly through the wood like a silver knife through fluffy cake. If saws
+were the only witnesses, the superiority of men over women would be
+established in very short order. "And say, Ann, I wish you would be
+thinking what you are going to charge for a half interest in this business.
+Law and real estate look slow to me after these returns right before my
+eyes," he added, as he stopped to move the pearl treasures farther out of
+the way of a possible flying plank.
+
+"I'm going to give you one of them to take home with you, Matt," I
+answered, with a most generous return of his appreciation of these
+foundation pebbles of my family fortune. Then I went to appeal to Rufus for
+the whitewash.
+
+"They's a half barrel uf lime and a bucket and bresh in the corner uf the
+barn what Mas' Adams made me git, he did; but it's fer the hawgs and can't
+be wasted on no chickens," he said, answering my very courteous request
+with a great lack of graciousness.
+
+"The chickens will pay it back to the hogs, Rufus," I answered airily as I
+ran back to the barn, eager for the fray.
+
+And a gorgeous fray it was, with Matthew whistling and directing and
+pounding and having the time of his very frivolous life.
+
+Now, of course, nobody in these advanced times thinks that it is not
+absolutely possible, even easy, for a woman to live any kind of
+constructive life she chooses entirely without assistance from a man, but
+she'll get to the place she has started for just about a year after she
+would have arrived if a man had happened along to do the sawing. The way my
+friend Matthew Berry cut and hammered off one by one the directions on that
+piece of paper in my smock pocket would have proved the proposition above
+stated to any doubtful woman. And while Matthew and I had had many happy
+times together at balls and parties and dinners and long flights in our
+cars and at the theatre and opera, also in dim corners in gorgeous clothes,
+I am sure we had never been so happy as we were that morning while we
+labored together in the interest of Mr. G. Bird and family. We went beyond
+the paper directions and delved in my book and hammered away until, when
+Rufus, with stately coldness, announced some time after noon that dinner
+was served, we both declared that it was impossible, though Matthew was at
+that moment performing the last chore commanded by dusting the medicated
+ashes under the last wing of the last Lady Leghorn, held tenderly in my
+arms. The mash had been concocted and heated in the cleansed whitewash
+bucket over a fire improvised by Matthew between two stones beside the
+barn, because I did not dare disturb Rufus again, and the model nests were
+all in place and ready for the downpour of pearls that we expected at any
+time, and there was nothing left to do that we could think of or read about
+in the book.
+
+"Let's go in and get a bite with Father Craddock and the twin, and then
+we'll read things to do this afternoon in the book where you got those
+directions," said Matthew as he started towards the house in the wake of
+Rufus' retiring apron.
+
+I hadn't broken Pan to Matthew, and I didn't know exactly why. Perhaps I
+didn't quite believe in the red-headed Peckerwood myself just then, and
+felt unable to incarnate him to Matthew.
+
+Uncle Cradd's welcome to Matthew was very stately and friendly when we went
+in and found him and father in their high-back chairs on each side of the
+table, waging the classic argument that Rufus had reported them to have
+discontinued at an early hour of the morning. Father was delighted with the
+package of books that Matthew had brought out with him in his car, because
+father considered them too valuable to be transported in the wagon which
+was to bring the rest of the library.
+
+"Just a little of the cream of the collection, Cradd," he said as he
+unwrapped a small leather-covered volume which Matthew had transported in
+the pocket over his heart.
+
+"Just five hundred dollars' worth of cream," whispered Matthew to me, with
+a whimsical look at the small and very ancient specimen of Americana. "It
+is a good thing that Senator Proctor has only Belle and let her have the
+six thousand cash for the Chauvenaise, and Bess wanted your little Royal in
+a hurry, though she got a bargain at that. Still the library is really
+worth five times what you paid."
+
+"Sh--hush!" I said as I led the way before the parental twins into the old
+dining-room. Father hadn't even questioned how he was to have the library
+saved for him, and of course Uncle Cradd knew nothing at all about the
+matter.
+
+After seating me with the same ceremony he had employed since my arrival
+into the family, though with hostility bristling psychologically for my
+plebeian intrusion into his traditions of the Craddock ladies, Rufus
+appalled me by offering me for the third time since my arrival at Elmnest
+roasted ribs of the hog, muffins and coffee. Only my training in the social
+customs of a world beyond the ken of Rufus kept me from exclaiming with
+protest, but I came to myself to discover that Matthew was devouring huge
+slabs of the roasted bones and half a dozen batches of the corn bread in a
+manner that was ravenously unconventional. I remembered that the last time
+I had seen him at repast, just about forty-eight hours past, he had speared
+a croquette of chicken with disdain, and I decided not to apologize for the
+meal even in the most subtle way. Also the spectacle of father polishing
+off the small bones, when I remembered the efforts of devoted Henri to
+tempt his appetite with sophisticated food, filled me with a queer
+primitive feeling that made it possible for me to fall upon my series of
+the ribs with an ardor which I had thought I was incapable of.
+
+"I call that some food," sighed Matthew, as he regarded the pile of bones
+in his plate with the greatest satisfaction in his appeased eyes. I felt
+Rufus melt behind me as he passed the muffins again.
+
+"The native food of the Harpeth Valley nourishes specially fine men--and
+very beautiful women," answered Uncle Cradd, with a glance of pride, first
+at me and then at father in his spare, but muscular, uprightness and
+finally at Matthew, with his one hundred and eighty pounds of brawn packed
+on his six-foot skeleton in the most beautiful lines and curves of strength
+and distinction.
+
+"Oh, that reminds me, Mr. Craddock, and you, too, Father of Ann," said
+Matthew, as he reached into his pocket and hurriedly drew out a huge
+letter. "I have a proposition that came to the firm this morning to talk
+over with you two gentlemen. Ann thought I came out to help her settle the
+Bird family comfortably, and for a while I forgot and thought so too, but
+now I'll have to ask you two gentlemen to talk business, though I must
+confess the matter puzzles me not a little."
+
+"The art of dining and the craft of business should never be commingled;
+let us repair to the library," said Uncle Cradd, thus placing the spare
+ribs in an artistic atmosphere and at the same time aiming an arrow of
+criticism, though unconscious, at the custom of the world out over Paradise
+Ridge of feeding business conditions down the throat of an adversary with
+his food and drink, specially drink.
+
+"I don't know why, but I'm scared to death now that I'm up against it,"
+Matthew confided to me as he first took a legal-looking piece of paper from
+his pocket and then hastily put it back as he and I followed the parental
+twins down the hall and into the library.
+
+"Will you rescue me, Ann?" he whispered as he ceremoniously seated me in
+my low chair and took a straight one beside father as Uncle Cradd stood
+tall, huge and towering on the old home-woven rug before the small fire in
+the huge rock chimney.
+
+"Yes," I answered as I settled back in the little chair and took one
+passionately delighted look around the old room, which I was seeing in the
+broad light of day for the first time. I am glad that the old home which
+had been the stronghold of my foremothers and fathers was thus revealed to
+me in half lights and a little at a time; I couldn't have stood the ecstasy
+of it all at once. The room was the low-beamed old wonder that I had felt
+it to be in the candle-light the night before, only now the soft richness
+of the paneling, which held back into the gloom the faded colors of the
+books that lined the walls, the mellowed glow of the rough stone of the
+chimney, and the faded hand-woven rugs on the floor made it all look like
+one of Rembrandt's or Franz Hals' canvases. But in a few seconds I came
+back from the joy of it to a consciousness of what Matthew Berry was
+saying.
+
+"You see," he was explaining with enthusiasm, "that this new form of office
+for the state commissioner of agriculture is really a part of the great
+program of preparedness that has been evolving here in America since the
+Great War began, and nobody knows just what to expect of it as yet. The
+request from the President for the appointment of Evan Baldwin to take the
+portfolio in the State of Harpeth has made everybody see that the President
+means business with the States, and that America is to be made to produce
+her own food and the food of the rest of the world that needs it. When a
+scientist like Baldwin, worth millions and with experiment stations of
+hundreds of acres in most states in the Union, which are coining more
+millions with their propagation output, steps out and stands shoulder to
+shoulder with Edison in working to get the United States prepared to feed
+the world as well as to fend off any of that world that menaces it, the
+rest of us have got to get up and hustle, some with a musket and some with
+a plow."
+
+"And some with an egg-basket," I added, as my cheeks began to glow with
+something I hadn't ever felt before, but which I classified as patriotism.
+
+"My country has only to call us and we'll answer to the whole of our
+kingdom, William and I. We were lads too young to carry muskets against her
+in the Civil war, but we, with Rufus, plowed these acres with children's
+strength, and the larger portion of our products went to feed hungry
+soldiers both blue and gray. I say, just let my country call William and
+me!" As Uncle Cradd spoke, his back straightened, and I saw that he must
+have been every inch of six feet three in his youth. "William?"
+
+"With you, Cradd," answered father quietly, and I felt that that formula
+was the one by which they had lived their joint youth.
+
+"Well, that is about what they are asking of you, Mr. Craddock," said
+Matthew, his cheeks red with the glow of the blood Uncle Cradd had called
+up in his enthusiastic heart. "The new State secretary of agriculture has
+asked our firm to undertake negotiations for the purchase of Elmnest, for a
+recruiting station for the experts who are to take over the organizing of
+the farming interests in the Harpeth Valley, which is the central section
+of the State of Harpeth. They offer three hundred dollars an acre for the
+whole tract of two hundred acres, despite the fact that some of it is worn
+almost to its subsoil. They consider that as valuable, because they wish to
+give demonstrations and try experiments in land restoration, though very
+little of that is needed here in the valley. It's a pretty big thing, Mr.
+Craddock and Father William, sixty thousand dollars will provide all the--"
+
+"Did I understand that this proposition is put to us in the form of a
+demand of our Government upon our patriotism?" asked Uncle Cradd in a
+booming voice, while father only looked uncertain and ready to say, "With
+you, Cradd." I sat speechless for a moment, with a queer pain in my heart
+that I did not for the first second understand.
+
+"Well, not exactly that, Mr. Craddock, but something like it in a--"
+Matthew was beginning to say in a judicial way.
+
+"That is enough, Matthew Berry, son of the friend of my youth. If the
+United States needs Elmnest for national defenses, I am willing to give it
+up--indeed insist on presenting it to the Government except for a small
+part of the sum mentioned, which is needed for the simple and declining
+lives of my brother William, Rufus, and me, and my niece Nancy. Will you so
+convey our answer, William?"
+
+"With you, Cradd," came the devoted formula with which father slipped back
+finally into the dependence of his youth.
+
+"Good, Mr. Craddock," exclaimed Matthew, and I could see visions of Ann
+Craddock reclaimed from her farmer's smock in a ball-gown upon the floor
+of the country club in the fleeting glance of triumph he gave me. "Of
+course, about the price--"
+
+Then in that counsel of the mighty arose Ann Craddock, farm woman in the
+stronghold of her worn-out acres.
+
+"Is it or is it not true, Uncle Cradd, that no deed to this property can be
+made without my consent?" I asked calmly.
+
+"Why, yes, Nancy," answered Uncle Cradd, indulgently. "But this is a matter
+for your father and me to decide for you. I am sure you cannot fail in
+patriotism, my child."
+
+"I don't," I answered. "I am going to be more patriotic than any woman ever
+was before. I am not going to sell my Grandmother's rosebushes in their
+gardens or the acres that have nourished my family since its infancy in
+America long before this Evan Baldwin ever had any family, I feel sure, for
+sixty thousand dollars to go back and sit down in a corner with. I am going
+to demonstrate to the United States what one woman can do in the way of
+nutriment production aided by one beautiful rooster and ten equally
+beautiful hens, and when they begin to take stock of the resources of this
+Government, we women of the Harpeth Valley will be there with our
+egg-baskets. Just take that answer to your Mr. Evan Baldwin, Matthew Berry,
+and I'll never forgive you for this insult."
+
+"Nancy!" ejaculated Uncle Cradd with stern amazement.
+
+"Can't do a thing with her when she looks like that, Cradd," said father,
+as he comfortably lighted a cigar and drew the small leather-covered book
+towards him with hungry fingers.
+
+"Now, Ann," began Matthew, in the soothing tone of voice he had seen fail
+on me many times, "you don't understand entirely, and your situation is
+pretty desperate in--"
+
+"I do, I do understand that when I refuse this offer I am assuming enormous
+obligations, Matthew Berry," I answered, with my head in the air and
+absolute courage in my heart.
+
+"I ask you to bear witness, Matthew, to what my answer to the demand of my
+country would have been if I alone could have answered, but Nancy is within
+her rights, and I protect the rights of a woman before those of any man,"
+said Uncle Cradd, and there was not a trace of relief in his fine old face
+that he was to be saved from a parting with the land that had been the love
+of his life, but one of affectionate regard and admiration for me. "Also
+say to the secretary of agriculture that a Craddock woman is as good as her
+word, and that the Harpeth Valley can be depended upon to lead the United
+States in the production of eggs in--when shall I promise, Nancy?"
+
+"About--about a year," I answered, searching in my mind for some data from
+the huge red book as to when wealth from the hen could be expected to roll
+in in response to the "good management" I felt even then capable of
+displaying. Even now I can't blame myself for over-confidence when I think
+of the two white pearls in my hat on the table beside father's book.
+
+"Better make it two," advised Matthew cautiously, but with a gleam of
+enthusiasm as he also glanced at the eggs. That gleam was what earned my
+forgiveness for his daring to come upon me with such a mission.
+
+"Say eighteen months. That will be the end of the second season," I
+answered with decision. "And it is about time for me to give the last
+feeding of my hostages to the United States and Mr. Evan Baldwin. You'll
+excuse me, Matthew?" I asked politely, but cruelly, for I knew he intended
+to follow me immediately.
+
+"Now here is your line of dispute, Cradd, just as I said," exclaimed
+father, who had opened his leather treasure and been hunting through its
+pages even before my heroics had completely exploded. And before Matthew
+and I had left the room, they were off on a bat with some favorite Ancient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Of course, Ann, you _do_ realize just what you are doing?" asked Matthew
+of me, as we walked on the moss-green flagstones back to the barn, and his
+voice was so sweet and gentle with solicitude that I felt I must answer him
+seriously and take him into my confidence. Affection is a note that one
+must always make payment on.
+
+"Yes, Matt, I do realize that those two are in a way children, for whose
+maintenance I have made myself responsible, and my mind is scared to death,
+but my heart is beating so high with courage that I can hardly stand it."
+
+"Oh, come with me, Ann, and let me--" Matthew wooed.
+
+"Matt," I answered gravely, "I haven't been here twenty-four hours yet, but
+when the thought of having it all taken away came to me, something in me
+rose and made me rage, rage, as I did in the house. I don't know what it
+is, but there is something in this low old farm-house, this tumble-down old
+barn, that leafless old garden with its crumbling brick walks, and these
+neglected, worn-out old acres, which seems to--to feed me and which I know
+I would perish without. Oh, please understand and--and help me a little
+like you did this morning," I ended with a broken plea, as I stretched out
+my hand to him just as I entered the door of my barn--castle of dreams for
+the future.
+
+"Dear Lord, the pluck of women!" Matthew exclaimed reverently, down in his
+throat. "I'll be here, Ann, whenever you want me, and if you say that
+chickens must fill my future life, then chickens it shall be," he added,
+rising to the surface of the question again.
+
+"Oh, Matt, you are a darling, and I--" I was exclaiming when a soft voice
+from out of the shadows of the barn interrupted me and an apple-blossom in
+the shape of a girl drifted into the late afternoon sunlight from the
+direction of the feed-room.
+
+"I'm Polly Beesley, and mother sent these eggs to scramble with the ones
+you got this morning for supper," she said in a low voice that was
+positively fragrant with sweetness. Two huge plaits of corn-silk hair fell
+over her shoulders, and her eyes were as shy and blue as violets were
+before they became a large commercial product. Her gingham dress was cut
+with decorum just below her shoe-tops and, taking into consideration the
+prevailing mode, its length, fullness, and ruffles made the slim young
+thing look like a picture from the same review from which I had cut my
+smocks. However, I am sure that if she had been at the between six and
+eighteen age year before last, when about two and a half yards of gingham
+would have been modish for her costume, she would still have been attired
+in the voluminous ruffles.
+
+"Holy smokes," I thought I heard Matthew gurgle, and I felt him start at
+the apparition, though the young thing never so much as glanced in his
+direction as she tendered me a quaint little basket in which lay half a
+dozen eggs, real homely brown eggs and not pearl treasures.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Polly dear," I answered with enthusiasm, and in obedience
+to some urge resulting from the generations ahead of Polly and my
+incarnation in the atmosphere of Riverfield, my lips met the rosy ones that
+were held up to me. I felt sorry for Matthew, and I couldn't restrain a
+glance of mischief at him that crossed his that were fixed on the yellow
+braids.
+
+"I didn't believe it of this day and generation," I heard him mutter as I
+presented him to Polly, who answered that she was "pleased to make his
+acquaintance," in a voice in which terror belied the sentiment expressed.
+
+In her eyes traces of that same terror remained until suddenly the Golden
+Bird stepped proudly out of the bushes with the Ladies Bird, clucking and
+scratching along behind him. He had led the family out into the pasture
+and was now wisely returning them to the barn before the setting of the
+sun. I thought I had never seen him look so handsome, and no wonder his
+conquest was immediate.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful," exclaimed Polly, while all restraint left her young
+face and body as she fell on her knees before the Sultan. "Chick, chick,
+chick," she wooed, in the words that Pan had used to command, and with a
+delight equal to hers in the introduction, the Bird came toward her. "Oh,
+please, sir, Mr.--Mr. Berry, get me some corn quick--quick! I want to
+squeeze him once," she demanded of Matthew, confident where she had before
+been fearful. His response was long-limbed and enthusiastic, so that in a
+few seconds Mr. G. Bird stood pecking grains from her hand. The spectacle
+was so lovely that I was not at all troubled by twinges of jealousy, but
+enjoyed it, for even at that early moment I think I felt a mercenary
+interest in seeing the friendship between the Golden Bird and the
+Apple-Blossom sealed. In her I psychologically scented an ally, and I
+enjoyed the hug bestowed upon him fully as much or even more than he did.
+It was a lovely picture that the kiddie made as she knelt at our feet with
+the white fluff balls and wings whirring and clucking around her.
+
+"Yes; let's go into the chicken business, Ann," said Matthew, as his eyes
+danced with artistic pleasure. "You love 'em, don't you, Miss--Miss
+Corn-tassel?" he asked, with teasing delight in his voice as well as in his
+eyes.
+
+"Yes sir," she answered as she looked up at him merrily, all fear of him
+gone.
+
+"Say, what do you think of going into the business with your Uncle Matthew
+if Ann refuses to sell a half interest in hers to me?" he asked of her in
+his jolly booming voice, with a smile many inches wide across his face.
+"I'll put up the capital, you put up the work, and we'll take all the
+prizes away from Ann."
+
+"I don't want to take the prizes from Miss Ann. I'd rather have Reds so we
+could both get ribbons," she answered as she dimpled up at me as
+affectionately as if she had tagged at my gingham skirts at our sixth and
+second years.
+
+"Reds it shall be, Corn-tassel, and I'll be back with them as soon as an
+advertisement in the daily papers can find them for me. I'll start the
+search right now," said Matthew, teasing the kiddie as if he had known her
+all his life, but with an expression turning to the genuine poultry
+business enthusiasm. "You and Ann come on down to the gate with me in the
+car and we'll talk--"
+
+But just here an interruption occurred in the way of a hoarse squawk coming
+from around the corner of the house. Hastily my eye called the roll of the
+Ladies of Leghorn and found them all present just as the tall young farmer
+whose ears had cooled down the day before over at Riverfield enough to let
+him admire the Golden Bird and family appeared around from behind the huge
+lilac at the corner of the house. He was attired as yesterday in the
+beautiful dull-blue overall and jacket; his hair was the color of Polly's
+and shocked from under the edges of a floppy gray hat, and in his arms he
+carried a large hen the identical color of Pan's head.
+
+"Howdy, Miss Nancy," he said in a voice as shy as Polly's, and his eyes
+were also as blue and shy as hers. He looked right through Matthew until I
+introduced them, then he shifted the hen and shook hands with Polly's
+"Pleased to make your acquaintance" greeting.
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Beesley," said Matthew, exerting more charm of
+manner than I had ever seen him use before. "My, but that is a gorgeous
+bird you have!"
+
+"She's a right good hen, but she's a mongrel. There isn't a single
+thoroughbred Rhode Island Red hereabouts. I aim to get a setting of pure
+eggs for Polly this spring if I sell my hawgs as good as Mr. Adam perdicks
+I will. I brought her as a present to you, Miss Nancy, 'cause she's been
+a-brooding about two days, and if you get together a setting of eggs the
+last of next week she'll hatch 'em all. She carried three broods last
+year."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Beesley, how lovely of you," I exclaimed, as I reached out my arms
+for the gorgeous old red ally. "I like her better than any present I ever
+had in all my life!" This I said before the face of Matthew Berry, with a
+complete loss of memory of all of the wonderful things he had been giving
+me from my debut bouquet of white orchids and violets to the tiny scarab
+from the robe of an Egyptian princess that I wore in the clasp of my
+platinum wrist-watch.
+
+"Well, I should say!" Matthew exclaimed, with not a thought of the
+comparison in his generous mind. "Did you know that your sister, Miss
+Polly, and I are going into the Rhode Island Red business together? We were
+just deciding the details as you came around the house. What do you say to
+coming in? How many shall I buy? Say, about fifty hens and half a dozen
+cocks? Let's start big while we are about it. If Ann is going to make
+three thousand dollars a year off one rooster and ten hens, we can make
+fifteen off of five times as many."
+
+"Yes, and we can bust the business all to pieces with too much stock,"
+answered the brother Corn-tassel. "Miss Nancy has got real horse-sense
+starting small, and chicken-sense too."
+
+"I stand corrected," answered Matthew. "I see that a flyer cannot be taken
+in chickens any higher than a hen can fly. I'm growing heady over this
+business and must go back to town to set the wheels in motion. All of you
+ride down to the gate with me and find out what the word jolt means."
+
+Then after housing the Bird family in the feed-room with their guest, all
+happily at scratch in the hay for the wheat and corn thrown to them by the
+Corn-tassels while Matthew and I went in to bid the paternal twins good-by,
+we all rode merrily and joltily down the long avenue under the old elms to
+the big gate at the square in Riverfield. In front of the
+post-office-bank-grocery emporium we deposited the Corn-tassels, introduced
+Matthew to Aunt Mary and Uncle Silas, with the most cordial results on both
+sides, and then turned in the car out the Riverfield ribbon instead of in.
+
+"Just a spin will do you good, sweet thing," said Matthew, as I settled
+down close enough to his shoulder to talk and not interrupt the powerful
+engine. "I want you to myself for a small moment away from your live stock,
+human and inhuman."
+
+"Oh, Matt, there is nobody just like you and you have made this
+day--possible," I said as I snuggled down into the soft cushions.
+
+"Honestly, Ann, do you mean positively that you don't want me--now?" he
+asked me as he sent the car whirling into the sun setting over Old Harpeth.
+
+"Not--now," I answered bravely, though I nestled a little closer to him. He
+seemed so good and strong and--certain.
+
+"All right then, I'll take the next best and I'll come in to your farm
+circle as partner or competitor or any old thing that keeps me in your
+aura. I'll grow chickens with the Corn-tassels or--here we turn back for I
+want to get out again over that bit of mountain-path that leads to your
+citadel before twilight."
+
+"Put me out at the gate, Matt. I want to walk up," I said, and held to it
+against his protest. I finally made him see that I really was not equal to
+another "rocking" over the road, and I stood and watched him drive the huge
+car away from me down the Riverfield ribbon.
+
+"I'm afraid I love him and just don't know it," I said to myself, as I
+stood at the big gate and watched him going away from me into life as I had
+known it since birth until twenty-four hours past. And from that vision of
+my past I turned in the sunset light of the present and began to walk
+slowly up the long avenue into my future. "I've never known anything but
+dancing and motoring and being happy, and how could that teach any woman
+what love is?" I queried as I stopped and picked up a small yellow flower
+out of a nest of green leaves that some sort of ancestral influence must
+have introduced to me as dandelion, for I had never really met one before.
+I felt a pale reflection of the glow I had experienced when I took the two
+warm pearls in my hands in the morning.
+
+Then suddenly something happened that thrilled me first with interest and
+then with--I don't know what to call it, but it was not fear. A fierce
+little wind, that was earthy and sweet, but strong, ruffled across my path
+and up into the tops of the elms, and with a bit of fury tore down an old
+bird's-nest and flung it at my feet. It was soft and downy with bits of fur
+and hair and wool inside, but it was all rent in two.
+
+"I wonder if I can hold my Elmnest steady on the limb when--" I was saying
+to myself unsteadily, with a mist in my eyes for the small wrecked home,
+when from somewhere over my left shoulder there came Pan's reedy call, and
+it ended with the two Delilah notes that I had thought I heard in the early
+morning. It was with no will of my own that I answered with that coo which
+I had heard Mr. G. Bird singing on the stage of the Metropolitan in my dawn
+dream. Also I crashed rapidly through the bushes in the direction of the
+call that this time came imperatively and without the coo.
+
+"To your left and then straight toward the oak-tree," came human words from
+Pan in quick command and direction. "Hurry!"
+
+With a last struggle with the briars I broke out into a small open space
+under the spreading branches of the old oak and upon a scene of tragedy,
+that is, it was almost tragedy, for the poor old sheep was lying flat with
+pathetic inertia while Adam stood over her with something in his arms.
+
+"It's the fine Southdown ewe I persuaded Rufus to trade for one of the
+precious hogs," he said, with not so much as a word of greeting or interest
+personal to me in his voice or glance, but with such wonderful tenderness
+that I came close to him because I couldn't resist it. "She dropped twin
+lambs last night and she is down with exhaustion. They are getting cold,
+and I want to take her right up to the barn where I can bed her on hay and
+get something hot into all three. Can you cuddle the lambs and carry them
+while I shoulder her?" As he spoke he held out his armful to me without
+wounding me by waiting for my consent.
+
+"Oh, the poor, cold babies!" I exclaimed, as I lifted the skirt of my long,
+fashionable, heavy linen smock and wrapped them in it and my arms, close
+against my warm solar plexus, which glowed at their soft huddling. One tiny
+thing reached out a little red tongue and feebly licked my bare wrist, and
+I returned the caress of introduction with a kiss on its little snowy,
+woolly head.
+
+"You've the lovesome hand with the beasties," said Pan as he smiled down on
+the lambs and me.
+
+[Illustration: A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while
+Adam stood over her with something in his arms]
+
+"I like 'em because they make me sorter grow inside some place, I don't
+know exactly where," I answered as I adjusted my woolly burden for what I
+knew would seem a long march. "I'll get 'em to the barn all right," I
+assured their first friend, who was now bending over the poor mother. "This
+is what I took Russian ballet dancing and played golf for, only I didn't
+know it."
+
+"You'd have executed more Baskt twists and done more holes a day if you had
+known," said Adam, with beautiful unbounded faith in me, as he braced his
+legs far apart and lifted the limp mother sheep up across his back and
+shoulder. It seemed positively weird to be standing there acting a scene
+out of Genesis and mentioning Baskt, and I was about to say so when Pan
+started on ahead through the bushes and commanded me briefly to: "Come on!"
+
+At his heels I toiled along with the sheep babies hugged close to my breast
+until at last we deposited all three on a bed of fragrant hay in a corner
+of the barn.
+
+"What'll I feed 'em?" I questioned anxiously. "There isn't a bit of any
+kind of food on this place but the ribs of a hog and a muffin and a cup of
+coffee."
+
+"We'll give her a quart of hot water with a few drops of this heart
+stimulant I have in my pocket, and she'll do the rest for the family as
+soon as she warms up. She's got plenty of milk and needs to have it drawn
+badly. There you are--go to it, youngsters. She is revived by just being
+out of the wind and in the warmth, and I don't believe she needs any
+medicine. She wouldn't let them to her udder if she wasn't all right. Now
+we can leave them alone for a time, and I'll give her a warm mash in a
+little while." As he spoke Adam calmly walked away from the interesting
+small family, which was just beginning a repast with great vigor, and
+paused at the feed-room door. With more pride than I had ever felt when
+entering a ball-room with a Voudaine gown upon me and a bunch of orchids, I
+followed and stood at his side.
+
+"Well, how do you do, sweeties, and where did you get this model hen-house?
+Trap nests! I wouldn't have believed it of you!" said Adam to the Leghorn
+family and me inclusive.
+
+"I didn't do it all," I faltered as I experienced a terrific temptation to
+lie silently and claim all of the affectionate praise that was beaming from
+Pan's eyes upon all of us, but I fought and conquered it with nobility.
+"Matthew Berry came out and did about--no, a little more than half of it.
+But I did all I could," I added, with a pathetic appeal for his
+approbation.
+
+"Well, half of the job is more than the world could expect of the beautiful
+Ann Craddock, who sits in the front of Gale Beacon's box at the
+Metropolitan," answered Pan, with a little flute of laughter in his voice
+that matched the crimson crests which stood more rampant than ever across
+the tips of his ears.
+
+"Why, where--who are you and--" I asked in astonishment as I followed him
+into the last of the sunset glow coming across the front of the barn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+"I'm just Adam and I go many places," he answered with more of the
+intoxicating crooning laughter.
+
+"Rufus says that red-headed Peckerwoods go to the devil on Fridays," I
+retorted to the raillery of the Pan laugh.
+
+"It _was_ Friday and she didn't sing Delilah to my notion. Did she to
+yours?" he asked, this time with a smile that was even more interesting
+than the laugh. "Come over and sit with me by the spring-house and let's
+discuss grand opera while I eat my supper and wait until I think it is safe
+to give the ewe some mash.
+
+"I will if you'll invite me to the supper; I can't face another swine and
+muffin meal," I answered as I followed him down a path that led west from
+the barn-door.
+
+"I've got two apples and a double handful of black walnut kernels. The
+drinks from the spring are on you," he answered as he led me down through a
+thicket of slim trees that were sending out a queer fragrance to a huge old
+stone spring-house from which gushed a stream of water. "Just these two
+spring days are bringing out the locust buds almost before time. Smell
+'em!" he said as he looked up into the tops of the slim trees, which were
+showing a pink-green tinge of color in the red sunset rays.
+
+"Oh," I said softly as I clasped my hands to my breast and breathed in
+deep, "I'm glad, glad I didn't have to let them sell it. I love it. I love
+it!"
+
+"Sell it?" asked Adam as he brushed a rug of dry leaves from under the
+bushes upon one of the huge slabs of rock before the door of the
+spring-house for me to sit on, and took two apples from his pocket.
+
+"Yes, and I'll work both my fingers and toes to the bone before I'll give
+it up," I answered as I crouched down beside him on the leaves and began to
+munch at the apple, which he had polished on the sleeve of his soft, gray,
+flannel shirt before he handed it to me.
+
+While we dined on the two red apples, the tangy nuts, and a few hard
+crackers that, I think, were dog-biscuits, I told him all about it, up to
+my defiance and assumption of the management of Elmnest in the library
+after dinner.
+
+"I _can_ keep us from starving until I learn chickens, can't I?" I asked
+after the recital, and I crouched a little closer to him on the rock, for
+black shadows were coming in between the trees and into my consciousness,
+and all the pink moonlight had faded as a rosy dream, leaving the world
+about us silver gray.
+
+"I wonder just how much genuine land passion there is in the hearts of
+women?" said Adam, softly answering my question with another. "The duration
+of race life depends upon it really."
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about, but I understand you," I answered
+him hotly. "Also I know that I love that old sheep more than you do, and
+I'm going to get in line with my egg-basket when the United States begins
+mustering in forces to fight, no matter what it is to be. I wish I could
+say it like I feel it to that Mr. Secretary Evan Baldwin, who forgets that
+women are the natural--the nutritive sex."
+
+"I wish you could," said kind Adam, with one of Pan's railing laughs.
+
+"Don't laugh at me--I'm getting born all over, and it is hard," I said with
+a sob in my throat.
+
+"Forgive me! I'm not really laughing--it's just a form--form of the
+Peckerwood's nature-worship," he answered as he took my hand in his warm
+one for a second. "Let's go finish up with old sheep mother," he added as
+he began to pad swiftly away up the path, drawing me after him.
+
+"Yes, I _am_ growing inside," I assured myself as I for the second night
+fell asleep on the soft bosom of my family tradition of four posts.
+
+One of the most bromidic performances that human beings indulge in
+anywhere from their thirty-fifth to eightieth years is to sigh, look wise,
+and make this remark: "If I could only begin life over again, knowing what
+I do now!"
+
+I'm never going to be impressed by that again, and I'm going to answer
+straight out from the shoulder, "Well, it would be a great strain to you if
+you found yourself doing it."
+
+That was about what my entry into life at Elmnest, Riverfield, Harpeth,
+was, and in many places it rubbed and hurt my pride; in many places at many
+times it sapped my courage; in many ways it pruned and probed into my
+innermost being with a searching knife to see if I really did have any
+intelligence or soul, and at all times it left me with a feeling of just
+having been sprouted off the cosmic. I know what I mean, but it doesn't
+sound as if I did. This is the way most of it happened to me in my first
+six weeks of life in the rustic.
+
+How did I know that when you cleaned up a house that hadn't been cleaned
+up for about fifteen years you must wait for ten days after you came to
+that realization for a sunshiny day, and carry all the beds out in the yard
+before you began, and that no matter how much awful dust and cobwebs you
+swept and mopped out or how much old furniture you polished until it
+reflected your face, it was all perfectly futile unless the bed-sunning
+ceremony had been first observed? Just how were the ability to speak French
+in the most exclusive circles of Parisian society and a cultivated
+knowledge of every picture-gallery in the world going to keep me from
+making a blunder that would put me down in Mrs. Pennie Addcock's mind as a
+barbarian?
+
+"Why, Mrs. Tillett and me have been getting ready all along to come and
+help you beat and sun the beds the first sunshiny day and then turn to with
+our buckets and mops and brooms. Now you've gone and done the wrong thing
+by all this polishing before a single bed had been beat and aired." As she
+spoke Mrs. Addcock surveyed my house, upon which I had spent every waking
+moment of my muscular strength, assisted by Polly Corn-tassel and sometimes
+Bud of the blue eyes, but not at all by Rufus, who resented the cleansing
+process to such an extent that he wrapped up his jaw in a piece of old
+flannel and retired to the hay-loft when Bud and Polly and I insisted on
+invading the horrors of his kitchen.
+
+"Oh, my dear Mrs. Addcock, won't you and Mrs. Tillett please forgive me for
+being so ignorant and help me do it to-day?" I pleaded as I picked up a
+small Tillett, who was peeping soft wooing at me from where he balanced
+himself on uncertain and chubby legs against his mother's skirts.
+
+"Well, in this case there is just nothing else to do, but turn to on the
+beds now, wrong end first, but next year you'll know," she answered me with
+indulgent compromise in her voice. "And I guess we'll find some broom and
+mop work yet to be done. Come on, Mrs. Tillett. I guess Nancy can mind the
+baby all right while we work."
+
+"Oh, he ain't no trouble now except he wants to find out all about the
+world by tasting of it. Don't let him eat a worm or sech, and he'll be all
+right," answered the beaming young mother of the toddler. "And, Miss Nancy,
+I was jest going to tell you that I have got a nice pattern of a plain kind
+of work dress if you would like to use it," she added as she pointedly did
+not look at my peasant's smock that hung in such lovely long lines that I
+found myself pausing much too often before one of the mirrors in the big
+living-room to admire them. Mrs. Tillett's utility costume was of blue
+checked gingham and had no lines at all except top and bottom, with a belt
+in between. Both ladies wore huge gingham aprons, and I must say that they
+looked like the utility branch of the feminine species while I may have
+resembled the ornamental. But they were dear neighbors, and the Tillett
+baby and I had a very busy and happy day with the Golden Bird and his busy
+family while the two missionaries did over every bed in Elmnest, even
+invading the living-room and shaking out the cushions of the old couch in
+the very face of one of the charges of Xerxes' army. I put his babykins in
+a big feed-basket in a nest of hay, and the two lamb twins came and licked
+him every now and then by way of welcome into my barn nursery. The fine
+young sheep mother was now in blooming health, and the valuable progeny
+were growing by the hours, most of which they spent at the maternal fount,
+opposite each other and both small tails going like a new variety of
+speedometer.
+
+"I see mother ewe knows enough to hang around the lady of the barn and
+feed-bins. Those lambkins are two pounds heavier than any born within a
+week of them at Plunkett's," Pan had said not a week past, and both sheep
+mother and I had beamed with gratified pride at his commendation.
+
+[Illustration: I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins
+came and welcomed him]
+
+Then while the renovation of the four-posters went on with a happy buzz, I
+busied myself in and out and about with the numberless details of care of
+the Bird family. My knowledge of music earned by many long hours in the
+practice of harmonics and a delighted and diligent attendance at the opera
+seasons of New York, Berlin, and Paris, to say nothing of Boston and
+London, had not, in my new life, in any way aided me to see that I had made
+a mistake in ordering a three-hundred-egg incubator to start building a
+prize flock with Mr. Golden Bird and the ten Ladies Leghorn, but in this
+case Adam had guided me from off that shoal, and by telegram I had changed
+the order for three fifty-egg improved metal mothers and the implements
+needed in accomplishing their maternal purpose. In one of them were now
+fifty beautiful white pearls that I could not refrain from visiting and
+regarding through the little window in the metallic side of the metallic
+mother at least several times an hour, though I knew that twice a day to
+regulate the heat and fill the lamp was sufficient.
+
+"I don't believe I'll be able to stand seeing them hop out," I remarked to
+Baby Tillett, the lambkins, and the good old red ally, who was patiently
+seated on a box over fifteen of the pearls. Adam had kept the poor old
+darling covering some white china eggs for nearly two weeks before he gave
+her the pearls on the same day we put the forty-five in the interior of her
+metal rival. I didn't at first understand his sinister purpose in thus
+holding her back until the metal rival could get an even start, but I did
+later.
+
+"I hope you have a mighty good hatching, Nancy, but I have no faith in
+half-way measures, and a tin box is a half-way measure for a hen, just as
+cleaning house without bed-sunning is trifling," said Mrs. Addcock, with a
+final prod as she came out to the barn with Mrs. Tillett to reclaim Baby
+Tillett.
+
+"You ain't married, Miss Nancy, and you won't understand how babies need
+mothers, even the chicken kind," said Mrs. Tillett, as she cuddled Baby
+Tillett gurglingly against her shoulder and followed in the wake of Mrs.
+Addcock with the mops and buckets down the walk and around the house.
+
+I stood beside the tin triumph of science, with my baby lambs licking at my
+hands, while Mrs. Ewe nuzzled for corn in one of my huge pockets, and a
+baby collie, which Pan had brought the week before, when her eyes were
+scarcely open, tumbled about my feet, and looked after the retreating
+women--and I did understand.
+
+"Still, I'll do the best I can by your--your progeny, Mr. G. Bird," I said
+as the great big, white old fellow came and pecked in my pocket for corn in
+perfect friendliness with Mrs. Ewe.
+
+I was called upon to keep my promise in less than a week. It might have
+been a tragedy if Bess Rutherford's practical sense had not helped save my
+affections from a panic. This is how it happened.
+
+"Yes, chicken culture is a germ that spreads by contagion. I'm not at all
+surprised at your friends," Adam had answered when I had appealed to him to
+know if I could sell Bess Rutherford just six of the baby chicks, when they
+came out, for her to begin a brood in a new back-yard system, only Bess is
+so progressive that she is having a nice big place in the conservatory that
+opens out of her living-room cleared for them to run about out of their tin
+mother when they want to. She says she believes eternal vigilance is the
+price of success with poultry as the book she bought, which is different
+from mine, says, and Bess decided that she wanted her chickens where she
+could go in to see them comfortably when she came from parties and things
+without having to go around in the back yard, which is the most lovely
+garden in Hayesville anyway, in her slippers and party clothes. "I'd sell
+her the chicks at twenty dollars apiece, and that's cheap if they produce
+as they ought to with their blood and such--such care as she intends to
+bestow on them. The twenty-dollar price will either cure her or start an
+idle woman into a producer," said Adam, in answer to my request, as he cut
+me out a pair of shoes from a piece of hide like that which the shoes upon
+his own feet were made from. It was raining, and I sat at his feet in the
+barn and laboriously sewed what he had cut.
+
+I told Bess what Adam said, and she paid me the hundred and twenty dollars
+right on the spot, and then insisted on opening the incubator at the
+regular time for the ten minutes the book directs, to cool off the eggs
+night and morning, and putting her monogram on six of the eggs. To do this
+she decided to stay all night, and telephoned her maid, Annette, to pack
+her bag and let Matthew bring it out to her when he came to help Polly
+Corn-tassel put their first batch of eggs into their incubator. Matthew had
+bought twenty hens and two nice brotherly roosters, and they had almost
+caught up with me in the number of their brown babies on the whole shells.
+Matthew had been coming out night and morning ever since he had brought
+out his and the Beesleys' poultry and had either had supper with us at
+Elmnest or we had both got riz biscuits and peach preserves and chicken
+fried with Aunt Mary and Uncle Silas and Polly and Bud. I had subjugated
+Rufus into cooking a few canned things, for which I had traded one of his
+pig jaws at the bank-post-office-grocery emporium, and Uncle Silas had
+thrown in a few potatoes, and Adam had brought me a great bag of white
+beans from across Paradise Ridge, so the diet at Elmnest had changed
+slightly. The absorbed twins had never noticed it at all; only they
+displayed more hearty vigor in attacking the problems of literature and
+history that absorbed them. Also almost every day Pan brought me young
+green things that were sprouting in the woods, and I cooked them for him in
+an old iron pot down by the spring-house and had supper with him.
+
+"Those two dears are the most precious old Rips I ever beheld," said Bess
+when we had retired to my room after supper on the fateful night of our
+near tragedy. "You are so fortunate, Ann, to have two delicious fathers in
+name only. Mine pokes into my business at all angles and insists on so much
+attention from me that I don't know how I'll amount to anything in this
+world. He says it takes a very fine and brainy woman to earn about ten
+thousand dollars a year being affectionate and agreeable to her own father,
+and that I get so much because there is no possible competition as I am an
+only child, but all the same it looks like unearned money to me. Just wait
+until those six little chickens begin to earn me a hundred dollars a month
+like my book guarantees they will do in their second year; then I'm going
+to show dad just how much I love him for himself and give him back my
+bank-book."
+
+"Still it is an awful lot of work, Bess," I remonstrated feebly, because I
+knew that I couldn't have made myself believe all I had learned in just two
+months at Elmnest the day I started in business.
+
+"You know, Ann, I told you about that wonderful Evan Baldwin who has been
+in Hayesville two or three times this winter, the man to whom the governor
+gave the portfolio of agriculture, I believe they call it. Well, he was at
+the Old Hickory ball the other night when you wouldn't come, and I told him
+all about you and about buying those little chickens from you, and he was
+so wonderful and sympathetic that Owen Murray sulked dreadfully. He
+encouraged me entirely and told me a lot of things about some of his
+experiment stations in all the different States. You thought you were going
+to stagger me with that twenty-dollar price on those chicks in shell, but
+he said he had paid as much as five hundred dollars apiece for a few eggs
+he got from some prize chickens in England and had brought them over in a
+basket in his own hand. He said he thought from what I told him about the
+Golden Bird that twenty would be about right for one of his sons or
+daughters. Ann, he is a perfectly delicious man, and you must meet him. It
+is awful the way all the girls and women just follow him in droves, though
+I'm sure he doesn't seem to notice us."
+
+"I never want to lay eyes on him, Bess. He has insulted me and I never--"
+but just here a thought struck me in my solar plexus and crinkled me
+entirely up. "Oh, Bess, I forgot to fill the lamp in the incubator
+to-night, and I believe the chicken eggs will be all chilled to death. What
+will I do? It is near midnight and it's--it's--c--cold."
+
+"Let's get 'em quick and maybe we can resuscitate 'em. Don't you remember
+about reviving frozen people in that first-aid class we had just after the
+war broke out and we didn't know whether we were in it or not? Come on,
+quick!" Bess seized the quilt from the bed and descended into the back
+yard, clad only in her lingerie for sleeping, a silk robe-de-chambre and
+satin mules, while I followed, likewise garmented.
+
+"Oh, dear, how cold," wailed Bess as the frosty Spring air poured around us
+in our flight to the barn.
+
+"Put the quilt around you," I chattered.
+
+"I'm going to put all the egg chickens in it," she answered as we scuttled
+into the barn out of the wind.
+
+"The lamp is out, but the eggs still feel warm to the hand," I said as I
+knelt in deep contrition beside the metal hen.
+
+"Fill it and light it, and they'll soon warm up," advised Bess.
+
+"There's no oil on the place. I forgot it," I again wailed.
+
+"Isn't there room under the hen here?" asked Bess, with the brilliant mind
+she inherited from Mr. Rutherford running over the speed limit, and as she
+spoke she felt under the old Red Ally, who only clucked good naturedly.
+
+"It feels like she is covering a hundred now, and there's no room for
+more," said Bess, answering herself with almost a wail in her voice. "What
+will we do? The book says April-hatched chickens are the best, and these
+would have come out in just a few days."
+
+And then from somewhere in my heart, which had harbored the cuddle of the
+cold lamb babies against it, there rose a knowledge of first aid for the
+near-baby chickens.
+
+"Oh, Bess," I exclaimed, "let's wrap the tray of eggs up in the quilt and
+take it up-stairs to bed with us. We are just as warm as the hen, and I'll
+get Rufus to go for Polly at daylight to fix the lamp while we stay in bed
+and huddle them until the incubator warms up, as it does in just an hour
+after it's lighted."
+
+"Ann, you are both maternal and intellectual," said Bess, with the deepest
+admiration in her voice. "Let's hurry or we'll never get warmed up
+ourselves."
+
+And in very much less time than could be imagined Bess Rutherford and I
+were in the middle of the four-poster, sunk deep into the feathers with the
+precious pearls of life carefully imbedded between us.
+
+"Now don't joggle," Bess commanded as we got all settled and tucked in.
+
+"Mrs. Tillett lets little Tillett sleep with her cold nights," I murmured
+drowsily.
+
+"I don't believe it; no woman would undertake the responsibility of human
+life like that," Bess answered as she tucked in a loose end of cover under
+the pillow.
+
+"Most of the world mothers sleep with their babies," Adam said when I told
+him about little Tillett, "and--" I was answering when I trailed off into a
+dream of walking a tight rope over a million white eggs. In the morning
+Bess said she had dreamed that she was a steam roller trying to make a road
+of eggs smooth enough to run her car over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Also Bess and I woke to find ourselves heroines. Matthew came to breakfast
+after he had seen the lamps in his mock hens burning brightly, and brought
+Polly with him to congratulate us on the rescue of our infant industry.
+Polly had told him of our brilliant coup against old Jack Frost, and he was
+all enthusiasm, as was also Uncle Cradd, while father beamed because he was
+hearing me praised and thought of something else at the same time. Later
+Owen Murray came out for Bess in his car, and insisted on buying six more
+of the eggs, because, he said, they had now become a sporting proposition
+and interested him. Bess agreed to board them to maturity in her
+conservatory for him at fifty cents a day per head and let him visit them
+at any time. He gave me a check immediately. He offered to buy six of
+Polly's chicks at the same price, but Matthew refused to let her sell them
+at all, and also Bess refused to have any mixing of breeds in her
+conservatory. Polly didn't know enough to resent losing the hundred and
+twenty dollars, because she had never had more than fifty cents in her
+life, and Matthew didn't realize what it would have meant to her to have
+that much money, because he had more than he needed all his life, so they
+were all happy and laughed through one of Rufus' worst hog effusions in the
+way of a meal for lunchers, but--but I had in a month learned to understand
+what a dollar might mean to a man or woman, and at the thought of that two
+hundred and forty dollars Mr. G. Bird and family had earned for me in their
+second month of my ownership my courage arose and girded up its loins for
+the long road ahead. I knew enough to know that these returns were a kind
+of isolated nugget in the poultry business, and yet why not?
+
+"We'll sell Mr. Evan Baldwin a five-hundred-dollar gold egg yet, Mr. G.
+Bird," I said to myself.
+
+After luncheon they all departed and left me to my afternoon's work.
+Matthew lingered behind the others and helped me feed the old red ally and
+Mrs. Ewe and Peckerwood Pup.
+
+"I was talking to Evan Baldwin at the club after his first lecture the
+other night and, Ann, I believe I'll be recruited for the plow as well as
+for the machine-gun. I'm going to buy some land out there back of the
+Beesleys' and raise sheep on it. He says Harpeth is losing millions a year
+by not raising sheep. I'm going to live at Riverfield a lot of the time and
+motor back and forth to business. Truly, Ann, the land bug has bit me
+and--and it isn't just--just to come up on your blind side. But, dear, now
+don't you think that it would be nice for me to live over here with you as
+a perfectly sympathetic agricultural husband?"
+
+"I needed a husband so much more yesterday to help with the pruning of the
+rose-vines than I do to-day, Matthew," I answered with a laugh. Matthew's
+proposals of marriage are so regular and so alike that I have to avoid
+monotony in the wit of my answers.
+
+"I'm never in time to do a single thing on this place, and I don't see how
+everything gets done for you without my help. Who helps you?"
+
+"Everybody," I answered. I had never had the courage to break Adam to
+Matthew in the long weeks I had been seeing them both every day, and of
+course Pan had never come out of the woods when Matthew or any of the rest
+were there. "I'll tell you what you can do for me," I said, with a sudden
+inspiration about getting rid of him, for the red-headed Peckerwood had
+promised to come and put some kind of hoodoo earth around the peonies and
+irises and pinks in my garden, also to bud some kind of a new rose on one
+of the old blush ones, and I wanted the place quiet so he would venture
+out of his lair. "You can go on to town and look after Polly carefully. She
+is going in with Bess for the first time since their infatuation, and I
+want her eyes to open gradually on the world out over Paradise Ridge."
+
+"Ann, ought they ever to open?" asked Matthew, suddenly, with the color
+coming up to the roots of his hair and burning in his ears like it still
+does in Bud Corn-tassel's when he comes over to see or help me or to bring
+me something from Aunt Mary, his mother. "Bess is one of the best of
+friends I've got in the world, but I just--just couldn't see Corn-tassel
+dancing in some man's arms in the mere hint of an evening gown that Bess
+occupied while fox-trotting with Evan Baldwin at the club the other night."
+
+"Who was the belle of the ball, Matt?" I asked him, with a flame in my
+cheeks, for the pink and lavender chiffon gown Bess had worn was one of
+the Voudaine creations that I had brought from Paris and sold her after the
+crash.
+
+"Oh, Bess always is when you are not there and, Ann, don't for a moment
+think that I--I--" Poor Matthew was stuttering while I rubbed the tip of my
+nose against his sleeve in the way of a caress, as I had a feed-bucket in
+one hand and a water-pan in the other.
+
+"Do go and shop with Polly and Bess as a force for protection. I must have
+a quiet afternoon to commune with my garden," I commanded.
+
+"Sometimes you make me so mad, Ann Craddock, that--that--" Matthew was
+stuttering when Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door to chat with him, and
+I made my escape through the barn and out into the woods. I had thought
+that I saw a glint of Peckerwood red pass through the pasture that way, and
+I was determined that Pan shouldn't give me and the garden the slip as he
+always did when he saw anybody around.
+
+As I ran rapidly through the old pasture, which was overgrown with
+buckbushes and sassafras sprouts, which were turning into great pink and
+green fern clumps in the warm April sunshine, I gave the two or three
+Saint-Saens Delilah notes which had been robbed of any of their wicked
+Delilah flavor for me by having heard Mr. G. Bird sing them so beautifully
+on the stage of the Metropolitan in that first dream night in Elmnest. But
+I called and then called in vain until at last I came out to the huge old
+rock that juts out from the edge of the rugged little knoll at the far end
+of the pasture. Here I paused and looked down on Elmnest in the afternoon
+sunshine with what seemed to be suddenly newly opened eyes. I had been in
+and out of Elmnest to such an extent for the last six weeks that I hadn't
+had a chance to get off and look at it from an outsider's standpoint, and
+now suddenly I was taking that view of it. The old rose and green brick
+house, covered in by its wide, gray shingle roof, the gables and windows
+of which were beginning to be wreathed in feathery and pink young vines,
+which were given darker notes here and there in their masses by the sturdy
+green of the honey-suckles, hovered down on a small plateau rear-guarded by
+the barn and sheds, flanked by the garden and the gnarled old orchard, and
+from its front door the long avenue of elms led far down to the group of
+Riverfield houses that huddled at the other end. All villages in the State
+of Harpeth have been so built around the old "great houses" of the colonial
+landowners, and between their generations has been developed a communistic
+life that I somehow feel is to bridge from the pioneer life of this country
+to the great new life of the greater commune that is coming to us. Down
+there in Riverfield I knew that there was sin and sorrow and birth and
+death, but there was no starvation, and for every tragedy there was a
+neighbor to reach out a helping hand, and for every joy there were hearty
+and friendly rejoicings.
+
+"Oh, and I'm one of them--I belong," I said to myself as I noted each
+cottage into which I went and came at will, as friend and beloved neighbor.
+Even at that distance I could see a small figure, which I knew to be Luella
+Spain, running up the long avenue, and in its hand I detected something
+that, I was sure, was a covered plate or dish. "And I'm making Elmnest
+fulfil its destiny into the future--into the future that the great Evan
+Baldwin is preaching about in town, instead of practicing out in the
+fields. I wonder if he really knows a single thing about farming."
+
+"He does," came an answer from right at my shoulder in Pan's flutiest
+voice, and I turned to find him standing just behind me on the very edge of
+the old tilting rock.
+
+"How do you know?" I demanded of him as I took the clean white cloth tied
+up at four corners, gypsy-fashion, which he offered me and which, I could
+see, was fairly bursting with green leaves of a kind I had never seen
+before.
+
+"I was with him at the Metropolitan the night I saw Ann Craddock in Gale
+Beacon's box, you know,--the night that Mr. G. Bird sang 'Delilah,' and
+also I've slept on the bare ground with him in his woods in Michigan and on
+his red clay in Georgia."
+
+"Well, I hate him all the same for the insult of his offer to buy Elmnest,
+though I doubt if he has any family pride or any family either, so, of
+course, he wouldn't understand that it _is_ an insult to offer to buy one's
+colonial home with holes in the door to shoot Indians through," I answered
+with the temper that always came at the mention of the name of a man I had
+chosen to consider a foe without any consent on his part at all.
+
+"You'd think he was born and raised in a hollow log if you should ever
+interview him, and he hasn't any family, but from some of the motions he is
+making, I think he intends to have," answered Pan, with one of his most
+fluty jeers, and he shook his head until the crests ruffled still lower
+over the tips of his ears.
+
+"Are you--you one of his agents--that is, _spies_, and was it you that
+insulted me by wanting to buy Elmnest just because it was poor and old?" I
+demanded, with the color in my cheeks.
+
+"I am not his spy or his agent, and do you want to come down to the
+spring-house and cook these wild-mustard shoots for our dinner, or shall I
+go at our old garden with the prospect of an empty stomach at sunset?"
+
+"Why won't you come in to dinner with me?" I asked, with a mollified laugh,
+though I knew I was bringing down upon myself about my hundredth refusal of
+proffered hospitality.
+
+"Two reasons--first, because I won't eat with my neighbors at the 'great
+house' when I can't eat with them in the cottage, and I just can't eat the
+grease that a lot of the poorer villagers deluge their food with. I'm Pan,
+and I live in the woods on roots and herbs. Second--because about six weeks
+ago I found a farm woman who would come out at my wooing to cook and eat
+the herbs and roots with me and I could have her to myself all alone. Now,
+will you come on down to the spring?" And without waiting for my reply,
+Adam started down the hill, crosswise from the path by which I had
+ascended, padding ahead in his weird leather sandals and breaking a path
+for me through the undergrowth as I followed close at his shoulder, an
+order of rough travel to which I had become accustomed in the weeks that
+had passed and that now seemed to me--well, I might say racial.
+
+In the riot of an April growing day, in which we could hear life fairly
+teem and buzz at our feet, on right, and left, and overhead, Adam and I
+worked shoulder to shoulder in the old garden of Elmnest. Every now and
+then I ran down to the spring to put a green fagot under the pot of herbs,
+which needed to simmer for hours to be as delicious as was possible for
+them. From the library came a rattle and bang of literary musketry from the
+blessed parental twins, who were for the time being with Julius Caesar in
+"all Gaul," and oblivious to anything in the twentieth century, even a
+spring-intoxicated niece and daughter down in her grandmother's garden with
+a Pan from the woods; occasionally Rufus rattled a pot or a pan; but save
+for these few echoes of civilization, Adam and I delved and spaded and
+clipped and pruned and planted in the old garden just as if it had been the
+plot of ground without the walls of Eden in which our first parents were
+forced to get busy.
+
+"Great work, Farmwoman," said Adam as we sat down on the side steps to eat,
+bite-about, the huge red apple he had taken from the bundle of emigrant
+appearance which he always carried over his shoulder on the end of a long
+hickory stick and which I had by investigation at different times found to
+contain everything from clean linen to Sanskrit poetry for father. To-day I
+found the manuscript score of a new opera by no less a person than Hurter
+himself, which he insisted on having me hum through with him while we ate
+the apple.
+
+"I told Hurter I thought that fourth movement wouldn't do, and now I know
+it after hearing you try it through an apple," said Pan as he rose from
+beside me, tied the manuscript up in the bandana bundle, and picked up his
+long pruning-knife. "Now, Woman, we'll put a curb on the rambling of every
+last rambler in this garden and then we can lay out the rows for Bud to
+plant with the snap beans to-morrow." Adam, from the first day he had met
+me, had addressed me simply with my generic class name, and I had found it
+a good one to which to make answer. Also Adam had shown me the profit and
+beauty of planting all needful vegetables mixed up with the flowers in the
+rich and loamy old garden, and had adjusted a cropping arrangement between
+the Corn-tassel Bud and me that was to be profitable to us both, Bud only
+doing in odd hours the work I couldn't do, and getting a share of the
+profits.
+
+"Don't work me to death to-day," I pleaded, and told him about the rescue
+of the babies Bird with so much dramatic force that his laughter rang out
+with such volume that old Rufus came to the kitchen window to look out and
+shake his head, and I knew he was muttering about "Peckerwoods," "devils,"
+and the sixth day of the week. "Will the chicks live all right, do you
+think?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"They're safe if they never got cold to the touch and you didn't joggle 'em
+too much. Do either you or Miss Rutherford happen to er--er--kick in your
+sleep?"
+
+"We do not!" I answered with dignity, as I snipped away a dead branch of
+ivy from across the path.
+
+"I just thought Miss Rutherford might from--"
+
+"You don't know Bess; she's so executive that--"
+
+"That she wouldn't kick eggs for anything," finished Pan, mockingly. "She
+does pretty well in the Russian ballet, doesn't she?"
+
+"Oh, I wish you could just see her in the 'Cloud Wisp'!" I exclaimed, with
+the greatest pride, for Bess Rutherford has nothing to envy Pavlova about.
+
+"I have--er--have a great desire to so behold her at some future time,"
+answered Pan, with one of his eery laughs, and I could almost see hoofs
+through the raw hide of his shoes. I would have ruffled the red crests off
+of the tips of his ears to see if they really were pointed if he had not
+stood just out of reach of my hand, where it would have been impossible to
+catch him if I tried.
+
+"You won't eat with me in civilization, you won't meet any of my friends,
+and I don't believe you ever want to please me," I said as I turned away
+from his provocation and began again with the scissors.
+
+"I don't like world girls," he said with the fluty coo in his voice that
+always calms the Ladies Leghorn when they are ruffled. "I only love farm
+women. The moon is beginning to get a rise out of the setting sun, and
+let's go away from these haunts of men to our own woods home. Come along!"
+As he spoke Pan pocketed his long knife, picked up his stick and bundle,
+and began to pad away through the trees down towards the spring, with me at
+his shoulder, and for the first time he held my hand in his as I followed
+in my usual squaw style.
+
+In all the long dreary weeks that followed I was glad that I had had that
+dinner at sunset and moonrise with him down in the cove at the spring that
+was away from all the world. All during the days that never seemed to end,
+as I went upon my round of duties, I put the ache of the memories of it
+from me, but in the night I took the agony into my heart and cherished it.
+
+"And it's the Romney hand ye have with the herb-pot, Woman dear," said Adam
+as he squatted down beside our simmering pot and stirred it with the clean
+hickory stick I had barked for that purpose when, very shortly after high
+noon, I had put the greens, with the two wild onion sprigs and the handful
+of inevitable black-walnut kernels, into the iron pot set on the two rocks
+with their smoldering green fire between. "You know you'd rather be eating
+this dinner of sprouts and black bread with your poor Adam than--than
+dancing that 'Cloud Drift' in town with Matthew Berry--or Baldwin the
+enemy."
+
+"Yes," I answered, as I knelt beside him and thrust in another slim stick
+and tasted the juice of the pot off the end. "But it would be hard to make
+Matthew believe it. I forgot to tell you that Matt is really going in for
+farming, thanks to the evil influence of your friend Evan Baldwin, who
+wouldn't know a farm if he met one on the road, a real farm, I mean. Poor
+Matt little knows the life of toil he is plotting for himself."
+
+"Is he coming to live at Elmnest?" asked Adam, in a voice of entire
+unconcern, as he took the black loaf from his gypsy pack and began to cut
+it up into hunks and lay it on the clean rock beside the pot.
+
+"He is not," I answered with an indignation that I could see no reason
+for.
+
+"Sooner or later, Woman, you'll have to take a mate," was the primitive
+statement that confronted me as I lifted the pot with the skirt of my
+blouse and poured the greens into two brown crockery bowls that Adam kept
+secreted with the pot on a ledge of the old spring-house.
+
+"Well, a husky young farmer is the only kind of a man who need apply. I
+mean a born rustic. I couldn't risk an amateur with the farm after all
+you've taught me," I answered as we seated ourselves on the warm earth side
+by side and began to dip the hunks of black bread into our bowls and lift
+the delicious wilted leaves to our mouths with it, a mode of consumption it
+had taken Pan several attempts to teach me. Pan never talks when he eats,
+and he seems to browse food in a way that each time tempts me more and more
+to reach out my hand and lift one of the red crests to see about the points
+of his ears.
+
+"Do you want to hear my invocation to my ultimate woman?" he asked as he
+set his bowl down after polishing it out with his last chunk of bread some
+minutes after I had so finished up mine.
+
+"Is it more imperative than the one you give me under my window before I
+have had less than a good half-night's sleep every morning?" I asked as I
+crushed a blade of meadow fern in my hands and inhaled its queer tang.
+
+    "I await my beloved in
+    Grain fields.
+    Come, woman!
+    In thy eyes is truth.
+    Thy body must give food with
+    Sweat of labor, and thy lips
+    Hold drink for love thirst.
+    I am thy child.
+    I am thy mate.
+    Come!"
+
+Pan took my hand in his as he chanted, and held my fingers to his lips, and
+ended his chant with several weird, eery, crooning notes blown across his
+lips and through my fingers out into the moonlit shadows.
+
+"I feel about you just as I do about one of Mrs. Ewe's lambkins," I
+whispered, with a queer answering laugh in my voice, which held and
+repeated the croon in his.
+
+    "I am thy child.
+    I am thy mate.
+    Oh, come!"
+
+again chanted Pan, and it surely wasn't imagination that made me think that
+the red crests ruffled in the wind. The light in his eyes was unlike
+anything I had ever seen; it smouldered and flamed like the embers under
+the pot beside the rock. It drew me until the sleeve of my smock brushed
+his sleeve of gray flannel. His arms hovered, but didn't quite enclose me.
+
+"And the way I am going to feel about all the little chickens out of the
+incubator," I added slowly as if the admission was being drawn out of me.
+Still the arms hovered, the crests ruffled, and the eyes searched down
+into the depths of me, which had so lately been plowed and harrowed and
+sown with a new and productive flower.
+
+"And the old twin fathers," I added almost begrudgingly, as I cast him my
+last treasure.
+
+Then with a laugh that I know was a line-reproduction descended from the
+one that Adam gave when he first recognized Eve, Pan folded me into his
+arms, laid his red head on my breast, and held up his lips to mine with a
+"love-thirst" that it took me more than a long minute to slack to the point
+of words.
+
+"I knew there was one earth woman due to develop at the first decade of
+this century, and I've found her," Pan fluted softly as he in turn took me
+on his breast and pressed his russet cheek against the tan of mine. "I'm
+going to take her off into the woods and then in a generation salvation for
+the nation will come forth from the forest."
+
+"My word is given to the Golden Bird to see his progeny safe into the
+world, and I must do that before--" but my words ended in a laugh as I
+slipped out of Pan's arms and sprang to my feet and away from him.
+
+"We'll keep that faith with Mr. Bird to-night, and then I can take you with
+me before daylight," said Pan as he collected his Romney bundle with his
+left hand and me with his right and began to pad up the path from the
+spring-house towards the barn under a shower of the white locust-blossoms,
+which were giving forth their last breath of perfume in a gorgeous volume.
+
+"To-night?" I asked from the hollow between his breast and his arm where I
+was fitted and held steadily so that my steps seemed to be his steps and
+the breath of my lungs to come from his.
+
+"Yes; most of the eggs were pipped when I went in the barn to put away the
+tools," answered Adam, with very much less excitement than the occasion
+called for.
+
+"Oh, why--why didn't you tell me?" I demanded as I came out of the first
+half of a kiss and before I retired into the last half.
+
+"Too hungry--had to be fed before they got to eating at your heart,"
+answered Pan in a way that made me know that he meant me and not the
+dandelion greens and brown bread.
+
+"You are joking me; they are not due until day after to-morrow," I said as
+I took my lips away and began to hurry us both towards the barn.
+
+"All April hatches are from two to three days early," was Adam's prosaic
+and instructive answer that cut the last kiss short as we entered the
+barn-door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Quickly I released myself from his arm and flew to kneel in front of the
+metal mother, with the electric torch aimed directly into the little window
+that revealed all her inmost processes. The Peckerwood Pan hovered just at
+my shoulder, and together we beheld what was to me the most wonderful
+phenomenon of nature that had ever come my way. No sunset from Pike's Peak
+or high note from the throat of Caruso could equal it in my estimation.
+Behold, the first baby Bird stepped forth into the world right before my
+astonished and enraptured eyes! It was in this manner.
+
+"Look, right here next to the glass," said Adam, as he put his finger
+against the lower left-hand corner of the peep window, and there I directed
+my torch. One of the great white pearls had a series of little holes around
+one end of it, and while I gazed a sharp little beak was thrust suddenly
+from within it. The shell fell apart, and out stepped the first small
+Leghorn Bird with an assurance that had an undoubted resemblance to that of
+his masculine parent. For a moment he blinked and balanced; then he
+stretched his small wings and shook himself, an operation that seemed to
+fluff about fifty per cent. of the moist aspect from his plump little body,
+and then he deliberately turned and looked into my wide-opened eyes. I
+promptly gasped and sat down on the barn floor, with my head weakly cuddled
+against Adam's knee.
+
+"Two more here on the right-hand side, Woman," said Adam, as he knelt
+beside me, took the torch, supported me in my reaction of astonishment, and
+showed me where a perfect little batch of babies was being born. "Whew,
+Farmer Craddock, but those are fine chickens! Heaven help us, but they are
+all exploding at one time! Only eggs of one hundred per cent. vigor and
+fertility hatch that way. Look at the moisture gathering on the glass. If
+you put your hand in there you would find it about a hundred and ten."
+
+"Oh, look! G. Bird Junior, the first, is almost dry. Please, please let me
+take him in my hand!" I exclaimed as that five-minute-old baby pressed
+close up against the glass and blinked at the light and us bewitchingly.
+
+"You mustn't open the door for at least twelve hours now. Come away before
+the temptation overcomes you," commanded Pan.
+
+"Wait twelve hours to take that fluff-ball in my hands? Adam, you are
+cruel," I said, as he pocketed the torch and left the drama of birth dark
+and without footlights. As he padded away towards the moonlit barn-door, I
+followed him in reluctant protest.
+
+"Do you see that tall pine outlined against the sky over there on Paradise
+Ridge, Woman?" asked Adam, with the Pan lights and laugh coming back into
+his farmer eyes and voice. "I have got to be there an hour before dawn,
+and it is fifteen good miles or more. I want to roll against a log
+somewhere and sleep a bit, and it is now after ten o'clock. Go get your
+bundle, and I'll hang it on my stick, and we will disappear into the forest
+forever. I know a hermit who'll put us in marriage bonds. Come!" As he held
+out his arms Adam began to chant the weird tune to that mate song of his
+own invention.
+
+"You know I can't do that," I said as I went into his embrace and drank the
+chant down into my heart. "There are so many live things that I must stay
+to watch over. I--I'm their--mother as well as--as yours. They must be
+fed."
+
+"God, there really is such a thing as a woman," said Adam as he hid his
+smouldering eyes against my lips. "You'll be waiting when I come back, and
+you'll go with me the minute I call, if it's day or night? You'll be ready
+with your bundle?"
+
+"You don't mean at daylight to-morrow, do you, Pan, dear?" I asked, with
+one of the last laughs that my heart was to know, for sometimes, it seemed
+forever, rippling out past his crimson crests.
+
+"No; listen to me, Woman," said Adam, as he held me tenderly on his right
+arm and took both my hands in his and held them pressed hard against my
+breast. "I am going away to-night, and I don't know when I can get back. I
+only knew to-day I'd have to go; that's why I--I took you and put my brand
+on your heart to-night. I can leave you aloose in the forest and know that
+I'll find you mine when I can come back. But, oh, come with me!"
+
+"I wouldn't be your earth woman, Adam, if I left all these helpless things.
+I'll wait for you, and no matter when you come I'll be ready. Only, only
+you'll never take me quite away from them all, will you?"
+
+"No; I'll build a nest over there in the big woods, and you can go back and
+forth between my--my brood and Mr. G. Bird's," promised Adam with Pan's
+fluty laugh.
+
+"Branded, and I don't even know the initials on the brand," I said to
+myself as I stood on the front steps under a honeysuckle vine that was
+twining with a musky rose in a death struggle as to the strength of their
+perfumes, and watched Adam go padding swiftly and silently away from me
+down the long avenue of elms. A mocking-bird in a tree over by the fence
+was pouring out showers of notes of liquid love, and ringdoves cooed and
+softly nestled up under the eaves above my head. "I'm a woman and I've
+found my mate. I am going to be part of it all," I said to myself as I sank
+to the step and began to brood with the night around me.
+
+I think that God gives it sometimes to a woman to have a night in which she
+sits alone brooding her love until somehow it waxes so strong and brave
+that it can face death by starvation and cold and betrayal and still live
+triumphant. It is so that He recreates His children.
+
+"Now, of course, Ann, everybody admires your pluck about this retiring from
+the world and becoming a model rustic, but it does seem to me that you
+might admit that some of your old friends have at least a part of the
+attraction for you that is vested in, well, say old Mrs. Red Ally, for
+instance. Will you or will you not come in to dine and to wine and to dance
+at the country club with Matthew Saturday evening?" Bess delivered herself
+of the text of her mission to me before she descended from her cherry
+roadster in front of the barn.
+
+"Oh, Bess, just come and see old Mrs. Red and never, never ask me to feel
+about a mere friend of my childhood like I do about her," I answered with
+welcome and excitement both in my voice. "Do come quick and look!"
+
+"Coming," answered Bess, with delightful enthusiasm and no wounded pride,
+as she left the car in one motion and swept into the barn with me in about
+two more.
+
+"Now, just look at that," I said as I opened the top of the long box that
+is called a brooder and is supposed to supplement the functions of the
+metal incubator mother in the destiny of chicken young. It has feed and
+water-pans in it, straw upon the floor as a carpet, and behind flannel
+portieres is supposed to burn a lamp with mother ardor sufficient to keep
+the small fledglings warm, though orphaned. Did the week-old babies Leghorn
+have to be content with such mechanical mothering? Not at all! Right in the
+middle of the brooder sat the old Red Ally, and her huge red wings were
+stretched out to cover about twenty-five of the metal-born babies and part
+of her own fifteen, and spread in a close, but fluffy, circle around her
+were the rest of her adopted family all cosily asleep and happy at heart.
+"I left the top of the brooder open while I went for water the second day
+after hers and the incubator's had hatched, and when I came back she was
+just as you see her now, in possession of the entire orphan-asylum."
+
+"Oh, look, she's putting some out from under her and taking others in. Oh,
+Ann!" exclaimed Bess as she dropped on her knees beside the long box.
+
+"Yes; she changes them like that. I've seen her do it," I answered, with my
+cheeks as pink with excitement as were those of my sympathetic friend,
+Elizabeth Rutherford. "And you ought to see her take them all out for a
+walk across the grass. They all peep and follow, and she clucks and
+scratches impartially."
+
+"Ann," said Bess, with a great solemnity in the dark eyes that she raised
+to mine, "I suppose I ought to marry Owen _this_ June. I want to have
+another winter of good times, but I--I'm ashamed to look this hen in the
+face."
+
+"Owen is perfectly lovely," I answered her, which was a very safely
+noncommittal answer in the circumstances.
+
+"He carries one of the chickens he bought from you in his pocket all the
+time, with all necessary food, and it is much larger than any of mine or
+his in my conservatory. Owen is the one who goes in to tend to them when
+he brings me home from parties and things and--and--"
+
+"Matthew took off all of his and Polly's little Reds yesterday, and I've
+never seen him so--so--" I paused for a word to express the tenderness that
+was in dear old Matt's face as he put the little tan fluff-balls one at a
+time into Polly Corn-tassel's outstretched skirt.
+
+"Matthew is a wonder, Ann, and you've got to come to this dance he is
+giving Corn-tassel Saturday--all for love of you because you asked him to
+look after her. He is the sweetest thing to her--just like old Mrs. Red
+here, spreads his wings and fusses if any man who isn't a lineal descendant
+of Sir Galahad comes near her. He's going to be awfully hurt if you don't
+come."
+
+"Then I'll tear myself away from my family and come, though I truly can't
+see that I wished Polly Corn-tassel upon all of you. You are just as crazy
+about the apple-blossom darling as I am, you specially, Bess Rutherford,"
+I answered, with pleased indignation.
+
+"Ann, I do wish you could have seen her in that frilled white thing with
+the two huge blue bows at the ends of the long plaits at my dinner-dance
+the other night, standing and looking at everybody with all the fascination
+and coquetry of--of--well, that little Golden Bird peeping at us from the
+left-hand corner of Mrs. Red Ally's right wing. Where _did_ she get that
+frock?"
+
+"Do you suppose that a woman who runs a farm dairy of fifty cows, while her
+husband banks and post-offices and groceries would be at all routed by a
+few yards of lace and muslin and a current copy of 'The Woman's Review'?
+Aunt Mary made that dress between sun-up and -down and worked out fifty
+pounds of butter as well," I answered, with a glow of class pride in my
+rustic breast.
+
+"All of that is what is seething in my blood until I can't stand it," said
+Bess as we walked towards the barn-door. "The reason I just feel like
+devouring Polly Corn-tassel is that somehow she seems to taste like bread
+and butter to me; I'm tired of life served with mayonnaise dressing with
+tabasco and caviar in it.
+
+"Yes, a Romney herb-pot is better," I said, as a strange chant began to
+play itself on my heartstrings with me alone for a breathless audience.
+
+"And if you come in on Saturday you can--" Bess was saying in a positive
+tone that admitted of no retreat, when Matthew's huge blue car came around
+the drive from the front of Elmnest and stopped by Bess's roadster. On the
+front seat sat Matthew, and Corn-tassel was beside him, but the rest of the
+car was piled high with huge sacks of grain, which looked extremely
+sensible and out of place in the handsomest car in the Harpeth Valley.
+
+"Oh, Miss Ann, Mr. Matthew and I found the greatest bargain in winter
+wheat, and the man opened every sack and let me run my arm to the elbow in
+it. It is all hard and not short in a single grain. We are going to trade
+you half." And Polly's blue eyes, which still looked like the
+uncommercialized violet despite a six weeks' acquaintance with society in
+Hayesville, danced with true farmer delight.
+
+"It's warranted to make 'em lay in night shifts, Ann," said Matthew as he
+beamed down upon me with a delight equal to Polly's, and somehow equally as
+young. "Where'll I put it? In the feed-room in the bins?"
+
+"Yes, and they are almost empty. I was wondering what I would do next for
+food, because I owe Rufus and the hogs so much," I answered gratefully.
+
+"What did you pay?" asked Bess, in a business-like tone of voice.
+
+"Only a dollar and a quarter a bushel, all seed grade," answered Matthew,
+with the greatest nonchalance, as if he had known the grades of wheat from
+his earliest infancy.
+
+"Why, Owen bought two bags of it for our joint family and paid such a
+fortune for it that I forgot the figures immediately; but I took up the
+rug and put it all in my dressing-room to watch over, lest thieves break
+into the garage and steal. Also I made him send me plebeian carnations
+instead of violets for Belle Proctor's dinner Tuesday," said Bess, with
+covetousness in her eyes as she watched Matthew begin to unload his wheat.
+I wonder what Matthew's man, Hickson, at one twenty-five a month, thought
+of his master's coat when he began to brush the chaff out of its London
+nap.
+
+"Oh, Owen Murray is just a town-bred duffer," said Matthew, as he
+shouldered his last sack of grain.
+
+"Well, you are vastly mistaken if you think that--" Bess was beginning to
+say in a manner that I knew from long experience would bring on a war of
+words between her and Matthew when a large and cheerful interruption in the
+shape and person of Aunt Mary Corn-tassel came around the corner of the
+house.
+
+"Well, well, what sort of city farming is going on to-day amongst all
+these stylish folks?" she asked as she skirted the two cars at what she
+considered a safe and respectful distance, and handed me a bunch of sweet
+clover-pinks with a spring perfume that made me think of the breath of Pan
+O'Woods as I buried my lips in them. "You, Polly, go right home and take
+off that linen dress, get into a gingham apron, and begin to help Bud milk.
+I believe in gavots at parties only if they strengthen muscles for milking
+time."
+
+"May I wait and ride down with Mr. Matthew and show him where to put our
+wheat, Mother?" asked Polly as she snuggled up to her mother, who was
+pinning a stray pink into Matthew's button-hole per his request.
+
+"Yes, if he'll put his legs under old Mrs. Butter to help you get done
+before I am ready to strain up," answered Aunt Mary, with a merry twinkle
+in her eye as she regarded Matthew in his purple and fine linen. "Put an
+apron on him," she added.
+
+"Lead me to the apron," said Matthew, with real and not mock heroics.
+
+"But before you go I want to tell all of you about an invitation that has
+come over the telephone in the bank to all of Riverfield, and make a
+consultation about it. Now who do you suppose gave it?"
+
+"Who?" we all asked in chorus.
+
+"Nobody less than the governor of the State called up Silas, me answering
+for him on account of his deafness, and asked everybody to come in to town
+next Saturday night to hear this new commissioner of agriculture that he is
+going to appoint make the opening address of his office, I reckon you could
+call it. You know Silas is the leading Democrat of this district, and the
+governor has opened riz biscuits with me many a time. I told him 'Thank
+you, sir,' we would all come and hear the young man talk about what he
+didn't know, and he laughed and rang off. Yes, we are all going in a kind
+of caravan of vehicles, and I want you to go, Nancy, in the family coach
+and take Mrs. Tillett with you on account of her having to take all the
+seven little Tilletts, because there won't be a minder woman left to look
+after 'em. Bud will drive so as not to disturb Cradd or William in their
+Heathen pursuits or discommode Rufus' disposition. Now, won't it be nice
+for the whole town to go junketing in like that?" As she spoke Aunt Mary
+beamed upon us all with pure delight.
+
+"But Saturday evening is the night that Mr. Matthew is going to have that
+dance for me, Mother," said Polly, with the violets becoming slightly
+sprinkled underneath the long black lashes.
+
+"Well, dancing can wait a spell," answered Aunt Mary, comfortably. "The
+governor said that all the folks at Cloverbend and Providence and Hillsboro
+are going, and Riverfield has got to shake out a forefoot in the trip and
+not a hind one."
+
+"Oh, we'll have the dance next week, Corn-tassel," promised Matthew,
+promptly enough to prevent the drenching of the violets. "It will be great
+to hear Baldwin accept his portfolio, as it were."
+
+"And after his term begins I suppose he'll have offices at the capitol and
+will be in town most of the time. Then we can have him at all the dances.
+Polly, he dances like nothing earthly. Still Matthew won't let him come
+near you; he's deadly to women. We are all positively drugged by him,"
+exclaimed Bess, delighted at the idea of Hayesville society acquiring the
+new commissioner of agriculture for a permanent light.
+
+"Then I can count on you to help Mrs. Tillett and the children in and out,
+Nancy?" continued Aunt Mary, with the light of such generalship in her eye
+that I was afraid even to mention my one-sided feud with the hero of the
+hour. "You can take Baby Tillett and sit a little way apart from her so she
+won't have to feed him all the time to keep him quiet."
+
+"I can take eight people in my car, Mother Corn-tassel," said Matthew,
+with the most beautiful eagerness.
+
+"I can get in five," added Bess, with an equal eagerness. "Can I have the
+Addcocks?" Bess and the pessimistic Mrs. Addcock had got together over some
+medicine to prevent pip in the conservatory young Leghorns.
+
+"Yes, and Matthew can take all the eight Spains if I can sit down Mrs.
+Spain to a bolt of gingham in time to get them all nicely covered for such
+a company," decreed the general, as she ran over in her mind's eye the rest
+of the population of Riverfield. "I'll make all the men hitch their best
+teams to the different rigs, and by starting early and taking both dinner
+and supper on the way we can get there in plenty of time. Twenty miles is
+not more than a half day's trip."
+
+"I can sit by you and hold two Spains in my lap," I heard Polly plan with
+Matthew.
+
+"Sure you can," he answered her. "I think the loveliest thing about
+Matthew Berry is the way he speaks to women and children." As he answered,
+he piled Aunt Mary and Polly in beside the rest of the wheat-bags and
+motored them away down the avenue.
+
+"Ann, please come to town with me," pleaded Bess as she got into her car
+and prepared to follow in the wake of the wheat-bags. "I miss you so, and
+Belle weeps at the mention of you. She and I are having dinner at the Old
+Hickory Club with Houston Jeffries and Owen to-night. Matt will come, and
+let's have one good old time. I came all this way to get you."
+
+"I honestly, honestly can't, Bess," I said as I took her hand stretched
+down from her seat behind the wheel to me, and put my cheek against it.
+"I've got this whole farm to feed between now and night. Both incubators
+must have their supper of oil or _you_ know what'll happen. Mrs. Ewe and
+family must be fed, or rather she must be fed so as to pass it along at
+about breakfast time, I should say, not being wise in biology or natural
+history; the entire Bird family are invited to supper with me, and I even
+have to carry a repast of corn over the meadows to my pet abhorrences,
+Rufus' swine, because he has retired to the hay-loft with a flannel rag
+around his head, which means I have offended him or that father has given
+him an extra absent-minded drink from the decanter that Matthew brought
+him. Peckerwood Pup is at this moment, you see, chewing the strings out of
+my shoes as an appetizer for her supper. How could I eat sweetbreads and
+truffle, which I know Owen has already ordered, when I knew that more than
+a hundred small children were at home crying for bread?"
+
+"Ann, what is it that makes you so perfectly radiantly beautiful in that
+faded linen smock and old corduroy skirt? Of course, you always were
+beautiful, but now you look like--like--well, I don't know whether it is a
+song I have heard or a picture I have seen." Bess leaned down and laid her
+cheek against mine for a second.
+
+"I'm going to tell you some day before long," I whispered as I kissed the
+corner of her lips. "Now do take the twin fathers for a little spin up the
+road and make them walk back from the gate. They have been suffering with
+the Trojan warriors all day, and I know they must have exercise. Uncle
+Cradd walks down for the mail each day, but father remains stationary. Your
+method with them is perfect. Go take them while I supper and bed down the
+farm."
+
+"I know now the picture is by Tintoretto, and it's some place in Rome,"
+Bess called back over her shoulder as she drove her car slowly around to
+the front door to begin her conquest and deportation of my precious
+ancients.
+
+"Not painted by Tintoretto, but by the pagan Pan," I said to myself as I
+turned into the barn door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When I came out with a bucket of the new wheat in my hand, I heard Bess and
+her car departing, with Uncle Cradd's sonorous speech mingling with the
+puff of the engine.
+
+"We are all alone, Mr. G. Bird, and we love it, because then we can talk
+comfortably about our Mr. Adam," I said to the Golden Bird as he followed
+me around the side of the barn where a door had been cut by Pan himself to
+make an entry into my improvised chicken-house.
+
+Suddenly I was answered by a very interesting chuckling and clucking, and I
+turned to see what had disengaged the attention of Mr. G. Bird from me and
+my feed-bucket. The sight that met my eyes lifted the shadow that had lain
+between the Golden Bird and me since the morning I had taken him in to see
+his newly arrived progeny and had not been able to make him notice their
+existence. Stretching out behind me was a trail of wheat that had dripped
+from a hole in the side of the bucket, and along the sides of it the
+paternal Bird was marshaling his reliable foster-mother, Mrs. Red Ally's
+and all his own fluffy white progeny. With exceeding generosity he was not
+eating a grain himself, but scratching and chortling encouragingly.
+
+"I knew you were not like other chicken men, Mr. G. Bird, 'male indifferent
+to hatches,' as the book said," I exclaimed as he caught up with me and
+began to peck the grains I offered from my hand. "You are just like Owen
+and Matthew and Mr. Tillett and--and--" but I didn't continue the
+conversation because the chant began rending my heartstrings again. "Oh,
+Mr. G. Bird, it is an awful thing for a woman to have an apple orchard and
+lilac bushes in bloom when she is alone," I sighed instead, as I went on
+to my round of feeding, very hungry myself for--a pot of herbs. Later I,
+too, was fed.
+
+Long after the twin fathers had had supper and were settled safely by their
+candles, which were beacons that led them back into past ages, I sat by
+myself on the front doorstep in the perfumed darkness that was only faintly
+lit by stars that seemed so near the earth that they were like flowers of
+light blossoming on the twigs of the roof elms. In a lovely dream I had
+just gone into the arms of Pan when I heard out beyond the orchard a soft
+moo of a cow, and with it came a weak little calf echo.
+
+"Somebody's cow has strayed--I wish she belonged to me and could help me
+with this nutrition job," I said to myself as I rose and ran down under the
+branches of the gnarled old apple-trees, which sifted down perfumed blow
+upon my head as I ran. Then I stopped and listened again. Over the old
+stone wall that separated the orchard from the pasture I heard footsteps
+and soft panting, also a weak little cow-baby protest of fatigue.
+
+"I'll get over the wall and see if there is any trouble with them," I said
+and I suited my actions to my words. I suppose in the dark I forgot that
+cows have horns and that I had never even been introduced to one before,
+for with the greatest confidence and sympathy I walked up near the large
+black mass that was the cow mother, with a very small and wavering body
+pressed close at her side.
+
+"Did you call me, Mother Cow?" I asked softly.
+
+The question was taken from my lips as Pan came out of the darkness behind
+her and took me into his arms.
+
+"Yes, she called you. I didn't think I'd see you. I was just going to leave
+her for you and go my way; but trust women for secret communication," he
+said as my arm slipped around his bare throat.
+
+"Not see me?" I questioned.
+
+"I never wanted to see you again until I came for you, Woman. I didn't
+think I could stand it--to put you out of my arms again. I can't take you
+with me to-night. I came miles out of my way to bring her to you, and I've
+hurried them both cruelly. The calf is only two days old, but you do need
+her badly to feed the chickens. Milk-fed chickens show a gain of thirty per
+cent. over others. You can churn and get all the butter you need and feed
+them the buttermilk."
+
+"Do you suppose I can learn to milk and churn her?" I asked as I shrank a
+bit closer in his arms from this new responsibility.
+
+"Milk her and churn the milk," laughed Pan as he bent my head forward on
+his arm, set his teeth in the back of my neck, and shook me like Peckerwood
+Pup shakes the gray kitten when I'm not looking.
+
+"Will you show me in the morning?"
+
+"Woman, I have to run ten miles through the forest before daybreak, and I
+don't know when I can come back to you. I know I ought to tell you things,
+but I--I just can't. I demand of life that I be allowed to come for you and
+take you into the woods with only your Romney bundle. Will you be here
+ready for me when I come, and keep the bundle tied up?"
+
+"Yes," I answered as I drew his head down and pressed it to my breast,
+hoping that he might hear the chant on my heartstrings. I think he did
+hear.
+
+    "I am thy child.
+    I am thy mate.
+      Come!"
+
+he made response, as he slipped from my arms and away into the darkness,
+leaving me alone with only the mother now for company. She licked my arm
+with a warm, rough tongue, and I came back into my own body and led her to
+the barn and supper.
+
+There are two kinds of love, the cultivated kind that bores into a woman's
+heart through silk and laces in a hot-house atmosphere and brings about
+all kinds of enervating reactions until operated upon by marriage; the
+other kind a field woman breathes into her lungs and it gets into her
+circulation and starts up the most awful and productive activity. I've had
+both kinds. I moped for months over Gale Beacon, and made him and Matthew
+and father completely unhappy, lost ten pounds, and was sent to a rest-cure
+for temper. The next morning after Adam gave me the cow and calf and
+passionate embraces out in the orchard I began to work like six women, and
+what I did to Elmnest not ten women could have accomplished in as many
+days.
+
+I weeded the whole garden and I picked three bushels of our first peas,
+tied up sixty bunches of very young beets with long, tough orchard grass,
+treated fifty bunches of slender onions the same way, half a dozen of each
+to the bunch, and helped Bud Corn-tassel load a two-horse wagon with them
+and everything eatable he could get out of Aunt Mary's garden. Then I got
+up at two o'clock in the night and fed the mules so Bud could start at
+half-past two in order to be in the market at Hayesville long before the
+break of day, so as to sell the truck at the very top of the market to the
+earliest greengrocers. I gave Bud coffee and bread and butter and drove the
+team down to the gate while he went ahead to open it. I stood up while I
+drove, too, because Bud had not had room to put a seat in for himself and
+expected to stand up all the way to town. Talk about Mordkin and Pavlova!
+To stand up and drive a team hitched to a jolt-wagon over boulders and
+roots requires leg muscles! I hope I will be able to restrain myself from
+driving the team into market some day, but I am not sure I can. With the
+eggs and the "truck" Bud brought back sixteen dollars, eleven of which were
+mine. I bought a peck of green peas for myself from myself and ate most of
+them for dinner by way of blowing in some of the money. Then the chant on
+my heartstrings speeded me up to white-washing all the chicken
+paraphernalia on the place, and I dropped corn behind Rufus' plow for a
+whole day, even if it was to produce food for the swine. I went to bed at
+night literally on time with the chickens. I could only stay awake to kneel
+and reach out the arms of prayer and enfold Pan to my heart for a very few
+seconds before I vaulted into the four-poster and tumbled into the depths
+of sleep.
+
+My activities were not in any way limited by the stone walls that surround
+Elmnest, but they spread over entire Riverfield, which had very nearly quit
+the pursuit of agriculture and gone madly into a social adventure.
+Everybody was getting ready for the trip into the capital city to answer
+the governor's invitation, and clothing of every color, texture, and sex
+was being manufactured by the bolt. For every garment manufactured I was
+sponsor.
+
+"I sure am glad you have come down, Nancy," said Mrs. Addcock, with almost
+a moan; "that Mamie there won't let me turn up the hem of her dress without
+you, though I say what is a hem to a woman who has set in six pairs of
+sleeves since day before yesterday!"
+
+"I want shoe-tops and Ma wants ankles," sniffed Mamie Addcock. "Polly
+Beesley wears shoe-tops and she's seventeen and goes to the city to dance.
+And Miss Bess' and yours are shoe-tops, too."
+
+"Now you see what it is to raise a child to be led into sin and vanity,"
+said Mrs. Addcock, looking at me reproachfully from her seat upon the floor
+at the feet of the worldly Mamie.
+
+"I'll turn up the hem just right, Mrs. Addcock, while you get the collars
+on little Sammie's and Willie's shirts," I said soothingly as I sank down
+beside her at Mamie's feet.
+
+"I had to cut Sammie's shirt with a tail to tuck in, all on account of that
+Mr. Matthew Berry's telling him that shirt and pants ought to do business
+together. And there's Willie's jeans pants got to have pockets for the
+knife that Mr. Owen gave him. I just can't keep up with these city notions
+of my children with five of 'em and a weak back." As she grumbled Mrs.
+Addcock rose slowly from her lowly position to her feet.
+
+"I'll make Willie's trousers, Mrs. Addcock, this afternoon, if he'll come
+and help me feed and bed everything at Elmnest," I offered, with my mouth
+full of pins.
+
+"No, child, but thank you for your willing heart. Mrs. Spain told me how
+you made Ezra's pants so one leg of him came while the other went, and I
+guess a mother is the only one to get the legs of her own offspring to
+match. I'll work it out myself now that Miss Mamie is attended to."
+
+"But now I know how to trouser boys normally. I turned Joe Tillett out in
+perfect proportion as well as in strong jeans," I answered, without the
+least offense at finding my first efforts as a tailor thus becoming the
+subject of kindly village gossip.
+
+"Well, I hope this junket will turn out as Mary Beesley expects, with
+enjoyment for everybody. However, I'm going to risk my back with Mr.
+Silas' mules rather than with that Bessie Rutherford's wheels that are not
+critter-drawn. I only hope she don't spill all my children, that I've had
+such a time getting here on earth, back into Kingdom Come."
+
+"Would you rather go in my carriage with Mrs. Tillett, and let me go with
+Bess to hold in the children?" I asked with unconcealed eagerness.
+
+"No, I don't believe so," answered Mrs. Addcock, cannily. "Sallie Tillett
+is having her dress made buttoned up in the back, and she has been in the
+habit of feeding the baby whenever he cries for it, though he can 'most
+stand alone. She is going to depend on you and a bag of biscuit to manage
+him through the show, and I'd rather not take your place."
+
+"No; perhaps you would enjoy it more behind Uncle Silas and the mules," I
+answered cheerily, feeling perfectly capable of handling Baby Tillett and
+his bag of biscuits, because the memory of the times his little head with
+its tow fuzz had cuddled down on my linen smock, when I had carried him
+back and forth for long visits in the barn to the Peckerwood Pup so his
+mother could have a little vacation from his society, accelerated the
+movement of the chant on the cardiac instrument in my breast. "He stays
+hours and hours with me in a basket in the barn and is perfectly satisfied
+with the biscuits."
+
+"All the same I told Sallie I could make that dress by another pattern, and
+you'd better sit with him a good distance during the show," said Mrs.
+Addcock, as I finished shoe-topping Mamie and picked up my pink-lined white
+sunbonnet, which had been a present from Mrs. Addcock herself and was
+astonishingly frilly and coquettish emanating from such a source, and began
+to depart.
+
+"I'll take him on the other side of the auditorium," I answered, with
+respect for advice that I knew must be good through experience.
+
+And thus that pink and white, cooing, obstreperously hungry baby was made
+an instrument of cruel fate and--
+
+"Come over and see the little cap I've made Bennie so as to do you honor,"
+called rosy Mrs. Tillett as I went down the street towards the grocery.
+
+"I ain't got but six more yards of gingham to sew up for the two littlest,"
+Mrs. Spain called cheerily as she looked past a whirring sewing-machine out
+through a window that was wreathed with a cinnamon rose-vine in full bloom.
+
+"Want any help?" I called from the gate, which was flanked on both sides by
+blooming lilacs.
+
+"No; you go on down to the store. Mr. Silas have brought out ten suits of
+clothes for the men to pick from, and they are a-waiting for your taste.
+Persuade Joe Spain to get that purple mixed. I do love gay colors, and
+it'll go with my pink foulard."
+
+The scenes into which I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy
+in form, but serious in interpretation. The counter was piled high with
+men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the
+dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant
+angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling,
+embarrassed, harassed group of farmers in overalls. Before her stood Bud,
+attired in a light gray suit of aggressively new clothes, and she was using
+him hard as a dummy upon which to illustrate her vigorous and persuasive
+remarks.
+
+"Now, I am glad you have come down, honeybunch," she exclaimed at sight of
+me. "Here's a bale of clothes and a bale of men, and nobody can seem to
+match 'em up suitable. I have at last got Bud Beesley here into a dead
+match for his beauty, if I do say it of my own son. Just look at him!" As
+she spoke she stood off from him and folded her plump hands across her wide
+waist in motherly rapture.
+
+And Bud, with his violet eyes and yellow shock, _was_ beautiful in the
+"custom-made," fifteen-dollar gray cheviot, despite his red ears. All the
+Harpeth Valley farmer folk have French Cavalier, English gentle, and Irish
+good blood in them, with mighty little else and, as in the case of Bud and
+Polly Corn-tassel, when clothed in garments of the world, it comes to the
+surface with startling effect. Bud could have put on a gray slouch hat with
+either a crimson or an orange band and walked into any good Eastern college
+fraternity or club he might have chosen.
+
+"Shoo, Mother," said Bud as he turned around for my admiration, not
+surfeited with that of his mother.
+
+"I only hope some town girl won't catch him like your mother did William,"
+said Aunt Mary, with a laugh that ended in a little sigh that only I heard.
+Somehow I _will_ feel psychically akin to Bud and Polly.
+
+[Illustration: And Bud was beautiful in the "custom-made" fifteen-dollar
+gray cheviot with his violet eyes and yellow smock, in spite of his red
+ears]
+
+"Town girls are all movie-struck and don't want a man if a butter-paddle
+goes along with him," said Bud, with a laugh that was echoed from the
+overalled group.
+
+"Yes, but Miss Nancy here has outsold any woman in Riverfield for cash on
+eggs and chickens before May first," said Mr. Spain as he picked up a gray
+purple coat from the top of the pile on the counter.
+
+"She'll marry and go away in a big car, too," said Bud, as he looked down
+and flecked an imaginary speck from the sleeve of his new coat. Something
+in his voice made me determine to introduce Belle Proctor's little
+sixteen-year-old sister to Bud in the near future. The kiddie spends half
+her time away from school in Bess's conservatory with Mr. G. Bird's
+non-resident family, and I think it will do her good to come out in the
+field and play with Bud. She is frail and too slight.
+
+"Say, Miss Nancy, what do you think of this here purple to set me off?"
+asked Mr. Spain, as he held up the garment of his wife's desire. "Betty
+says it'll match out her dimity, and I 'low to match Betty as long as I
+can."
+
+"It'll be the very thing, Mr. Spain," I said, as I controlled my horror at
+the flaring-colored coat and reminded myself that harmony of domestic
+relations is greater than any harmony of art.
+
+"Now, pick your coats and slip 'em on, all of you, so Nancy can judge you,"
+commanded the general. In a very short time each man had got out of his
+overall jumper and into his heart's desire.
+
+A stalwart, comely, clean-eyed group of American men they were as they
+stood on parade, clothed for the most part in seemly raiment, chosen with
+Uncle Silas's quiet taste, except in the case of Mr. Spain, where he had
+let his experience of the past lead his taste.
+
+"Please, dear God, don't let them ever have to be put into khaki," I prayed
+with a quick breath, for I knew, though they did not seem to recognize the
+fact, that this rally of the rural districts in the city hall was a part
+of the great program of preparedness that America was having forced upon
+her. I knew that the speech of the governor would be about the State
+militia and I knew that Evan Baldwin would talk to them about the
+mobilization of their stocks and crops. Quick tears flooded across my eyes,
+and I stretched out my hands to them.
+
+"You all look good to me," I faltered in some of Matthew's language,
+because I couldn't think of anything else to say but the prayer in my
+heart, and I didn't want to repeat that to them.
+
+"Now, you have all passed your city examinations, so you can get back to
+work. Remember, that day after to-morrow is the junket, and one day won't
+be any too much to bank up your fires to run until you come back," said
+Aunt Mary in the way of dismissal.
+
+"Talk about vanity in women folks? The first peacock hatched out was of the
+male persuasion," she remarked as we stood at the emporium door and watched
+the men dispersing, their bundles under their arms, each one making direct
+for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down
+needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of
+compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we
+have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm
+pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed
+from the back door to her house on the hill and sent me out the front to
+Elmnest opposite.
+
+"I thought that there was some reason why Pan and I both chose to wear
+Roycroft clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Spain are in love after eight children," I
+remarked to myself happily. "I am in agony in any shoes Pan doesn't make. I
+wonder if any woman ever before was as much in love with a man about whom
+she knew so little--and so much as I do about Adam."
+
+"I don't want to know about him--I want to love him," I answered myself as
+I walked up the long elm avenue. Afterwards I recalled those words to
+myself, and they were bitter instead of sweet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Friday, the twenty-first of April, I shall always remember as the busiest
+day of my life, for, as Aunt Mary had said, it takes time to bank fires
+enough to keep a farm alive a whole half day even if it is not running. I
+did all my usual work with my small folk, and then I measured and poured
+out in different receptacles their existence for the last half of the next
+day. After breakfast on Saturday I finally decided upon Uncle Cradd as the
+most trustworthy person of the three ancients, one of whom I was obliged to
+depend upon for substitution. Rufus, I felt sure, would compromise by
+feeding every ration to the hogs, and I knew that he could persuade father
+to do likewise, but Uncle Cradd, I felt, would bring moral force to bear
+upon the situation.
+
+"Now, Uncle Cradd, here are all the different feeds in different buckets,
+each plainly marked with the time to give it. Please, oh, please, don't let
+father lead you off into Egypt or China and forget them," I said as I led
+him to the barn and showed him the mobilization of buckets that I had shut
+up in one of the empty bins.
+
+"Why not just empty it all out on the ground in front of the barn, Nancy,
+my dear, and let them all feed together in friendly fashion. I am afraid
+you take these pretty whims of yours too seriously," he said as he beamed
+affectionately at me over his large glasses.
+
+"Because Peckerwood Pup would eat up the Leghorn babies, and it would be
+extermination to some and survival to the most unfit," I answered in
+despair. "Oh, won't you please do it by the directions?"
+
+"I will, my child, I will," answered Uncle Cradd, as he saw that I was
+about to become tearful. "I will come and sit right here in the barn with
+my book."
+
+"Oh, if you only will, Uncle Cradd, they will remind you when they are
+hungry. Mr. G. Bird will come and peck at you when it is time to feed his
+family, and the lambs and Mrs. Ewe will lick you, and Peckerwood Pup will
+chew you, so you can't forget them," I exclaimed in relief.
+
+"That will be the exact plan for action, Nancy. You can always depend upon
+me for any of the small attentions that please you, my dear."
+
+"I can depend on the fur and feathers and wool tribes better than I can on
+you, old dear," I said to myself, while I beamed on him with a dutiful,
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+Then as Bud Corn-tassel had arrived to begin to hitch up the moth-eaten
+steeds to the ark, I ascended to my room to shed my farmer smocks, for the
+first time since my incarnation into them, and attire myself for the world
+again. The only garb of fashion I possessed, having sold myself out
+completely on my retirement, was the very stylish, dull-blue tailor suit in
+which I had traveled out the Riverfield ribbon almost three months before.
+But as that had been mid-February, it was of spring manufacture, and I
+supposed would still be able to hold its own.
+
+"It's perfectly beautiful, but it feels tight and hampering," I said as I
+descended to enter the coach Bud had driven around to the front door.
+
+"Will you give me a guarantee that you aren't just a dream lady I'll lose
+again in the city, Miss Nancy?" asked Bud, as he handed me into the
+Grandmother Craddock coach with great ceremony. Gale Beacon couldn't have
+done any better on such short notice.
+
+"I'll be in smocks at feeding-time in the morning, Bud, just as you will be
+in overalls," I answered laughingly.
+
+"My, but you are a sight!" said Mrs. Tillett, as she handed up Baby Tillett
+to me, with such a beaming countenance that I knew she meant a
+complimentary construction to be placed upon her words. "Now, just take up
+them little girls and set 'em down easy, Mr. Bud, on account of their
+ruffles, and ram the boys in between to hold 'em steady. Now, boys, if you
+muss up the girls I'll make every one of you wear your shoes all day
+to-morrow to teach you manners. Go on, Mr. Bud."
+
+Thus nicely packed away, we started on down the Riverfield ribbon at the
+head of the procession, followed by Uncle Silas driving Aunt Mary's
+rockaway, with his beautiful, dappled, shining, gray mules hitched to it,
+and beside him sat Mrs. Addcock in serene confidence in being driven by a
+man who could drive a bank and a post-office and a grocery. Mamie and
+Gertie Spain were spread out carefully on the back seat, with only one
+small masculine Spain for a wedge. The Buford buggy, all spick and span
+from its first spring washing and polishing, came next, with Mr. and Mrs.
+Buford cuddling together on the narrow seat. They were a bride and groom of
+very little over a year's standing, and the blue-blanketed bundle that the
+bride carried in her arms was no reason, in Mr. Buford's mind, why he
+shouldn't drive with one hand while he held a steadying and affectionate
+arm around them both. Buford Junior was less than a month old, but why
+shouldn't he begin to adventure out in the big world? Parson and Mrs.
+Henderson came next, he with snow-white flowing beard, and she, beside him,
+in a gray bonnet with a pink rose, while beside her sat his mother, Granny
+Henderson, now past eighty, but with a purple pansy nestled in her
+waterwaves.
+
+Others followed, and the remainder waited on the steps of the emporium,
+with Aunt Mary and Polly, for Matthew and Bess to come for them. It was
+hard for them to realize that the powerful engines in both cars would take
+them into town in little over an hour, when the journey as they before had
+made it had always consumed six, and they were becoming impatient even
+before we left. So when we met Bess and Matthew half an hour later down the
+Riverfield ribbon, I hurried them back. I afterwards learned that they had
+had to persuade Mrs. Spain to reclothe herself in the pink foulard, because
+she had decided that they were not coming and had gone back to work.
+
+In reality I didn't draw a perfectly free breath until I saw the entire
+population of Riverfield seated in advantageous seats on the middle aisle
+in the town hall at six-thirty, and beginning to get out their
+lunch-baskets to feed themselves and the kiddies before the opening of the
+convocation at eight o'clock.
+
+According to the advice of Mrs. Addcock and Mrs. Tillett herself, I had
+taken a stuffed egg, a chicken wing, and a slice of jelly-cake for my own
+supper, along with Baby Tillett's bag of hard biscuits, over on a side
+aisle, and from that vantage-point I could see the whole party.
+
+"They are lovely--the loveliest of all, mine are," I said to myself as I
+surveyed them proudly and compared them with other lunching delegations,
+which I knew to be from Providence and Hillsboro and Cloverbend.
+
+Baby Tillett crowed a proud assent as he stuck a biscuit in his mouth and
+looked at the lights with the greatest pleasure. I took off his new cap
+with its two blue bows over the ears, unbuttoned his little pique coat,
+which I had almost entirely built myself, and which was of excellent cut,
+and settled down to dine with him in contentment.
+
+Then it happened that I was so weary from the day of excitement that I had
+hardly finished my supper before I snuggled Baby Tillett closer in my arms,
+as I felt him grow limp very suddenly, and with him I drifted off into a
+nap. I was sitting in a corner seat, but I don't yet see how I slept as I
+did and cuddled him too unless it was just the force of natural maternal
+gravitation that held my arms firmly around him, but the first thing I knew
+I opened my eyes on the whole hall full of people, who were wildly
+applauding the governor as he stepped forward on the platform. Hurriedly
+straightening my drooping head and looking guiltily around to see if I had
+been caught napping, I discovered Matthew Berry at my side in a broad
+chuckle, and I immediately suspected his stalwart right arm of being that
+force of gravitation.
+
+"He's dead to the world; let him lie across your knees and listen to the
+governor's heroics of introduction to Baldwin," said Matthew as he settled
+the limp baby across my lap with his bobbing head on my arm. And he
+adjusted his own arm less conspicuously along the seat at my back.
+
+"I was up at four," I whispered, as the applause died away and the governor
+began to speak.
+
+The Governor of the State of Harpeth is a good and substantial man, who was
+himself born out on Paradise Ridge, and he had called in all of his people
+from their fields to talk to them about a problem so serious that the
+world of men, who had hitherto considered themselves as competent to guide
+the great national ship of state through peaceful waters, had been impelled
+to turn and call to council the men from the plows and reapers, to add
+their wisdom in deciding the best methods of safeguarding the nation. His
+speech was a thoughtful presentation of the different methods of
+preparedness which the whole of America was weighing in the balance. He
+explained the army policy, the Congressional policy, and then that of the
+State guard, and he asked them to weigh the facts well so that if it should
+come to the vote of the people of the nation, they would vote with
+instructed wisdom.
+
+There was a strained gravity on all the listening faces, and I could see
+some of the women in the groups of farmer folk draw nearer against the
+shoulders of the men, who all sat with their arms along the back of the
+seats as Matthew sat beside me. Young Mrs. Buford held the precious, limp,
+blue bundle much closer in her arms, and hid her head on the broad
+shoulder next her own, but on Mrs. Spain's comely face I saw a light
+beginning to dawn as she proudly surveyed the four sturdy sons with shining
+faces who flanked her and Mr. Spain.
+
+"And now," said the governor, "I have asked you here to-night to introduce
+formally to you one of the great sons of Old Harpeth, who has come back
+from the world, with his wealth and honors and wisdom and science, into his
+own valley, to show us how to make the plowshare support the machine-gun
+with such power that the world will respect its silence more than any
+explosion. A year or more ago he came home and asked me for his commission,
+and since then he has lived among you so as to become your friend, in hopes
+that he might be your chosen leader in this food mobilization. Gentlemen
+and ladies of the Harpeth Valley, I present to you Mr. Evan Baldwin, who
+will speak to you to-night on the 'Plowshare and the Machine-gun.' Friends,
+Evan Adam Baldwin."
+
+For a second there was expectant silence, and then from the back of the
+platform from behind a group of State officials stepped--my Pan!
+
+For a long second the whole hall full of people held their breath in a
+tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and
+fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling
+crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second
+breath, which they gave forth in one long masculine hurrah mingled with a
+feminine echo of delight. For several long minutes it would not be stilled
+as he stood and smiled down on them all and mocked them with his laugh
+mingling with theirs.
+
+Finally Aunt Mary, the general, could stand it no longer, and forgetful of
+her Saint Paul, she arose with all the dignity of her two hundred pounds
+and raised her hand.
+
+"All be still, neighbors, and let Adam tell us the same things he's been
+saying for these many months, and then we'll let him shuck his fine
+clothes and come on home in my rockaway with us."
+
+"No, with us!" fairly yelled Cloverbend in unison of protest with
+Providence.
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Mary," said Pan in the fluty tenderness with which he had
+always addressed her. "The governor doesn't know it, but I can't make a
+speech to you to-night. I am going to catch that ten o'clock train for
+Argentina, to get some wheat secrets for all of us, and I want all of you
+to begin right away to plow good and deep so you'll be ready for me when I
+get back in a few months. We'll have to inoculate the land before we sow.
+Only here are just one or two things I will say to you before I have to
+start."
+
+For about ten minutes Adam stood there before those farmer folk and, with
+his fluty voice and the fire glow in his eyes, led them up upon a high
+mountain of imagination and showed them the distant land into which he
+could lead them, which, when they arrived, they would find to be their own.
+
+The baby on my lap stirred, and I lifted him against my throbbing breast
+as I listened to this gospel of a new earth, which might be made into the
+outposts of a new Heaven, in which man would nourish his weaker brother
+into a strength equal to his own, so that no man or nation would have to
+fight for existence or a place in the sun. Then while we all sat breathless
+from his magic, Pan vanished and left us to be sent home rejoicing by the
+governor.
+
+Sent home rejoicing? Suddenly I realized that when Evan Adam Baldwin had
+gone, my Pan had also vanished without a word to me. What did it mean? His
+eyes hadn't found me sitting apart from my delegation with another woman's
+baby in my arms. Would there be a word for me in the morning?
+
+"In Baldwin emerges the new American," said Matthew, with a light in his
+face I had never seen before, as we all rose to go.
+
+"Do you blame every woman in the world for being mad about him when you saw
+that look in his eyes when he held out his hands and chanted that food
+plea to us? I'm glad he doesn't beckon to me, or I am afraid Owen Murray
+and Madam Felicia would be disappointed about that June decision of mine,"
+said Bess as she and Owen helped Bud pack the Tilletts and me into the ark
+for our return trip.
+
+"Will there be word for me in the morning?" the old wheels rattled all the
+way out the Riverfield ribbon, and I thought an old owl hooted the question
+at me from a dead tree beside the road, while I felt also that a
+mocking-bird sang it from a thicket of dogwood in ghostly bloom opposite.
+"Will there be word in the morning?"
+
+The next morning I awoke with the same question making a new motive in the
+chant on my heartstrings.
+
+"Uncle Cradd will bring his letter when he comes back from the post-office,
+and I know he'll send a message to you, Mr. G. Bird," I said happily, as I
+watered and fed and caressed and joyed in the entire barn family. "I hate
+him for being what he is and treating me this way, but I love him still
+more," I confided to Mrs. Ewe as I gave her an extra handful of wheat out
+of the blouse-pocket which I kept filled for Mr. G. Bird from pure
+partiality.
+
+Uncle Cradd did not bring a letter from the post-office for me. The blow in
+the apple orchard and the purple plumes on the lilac bushes looked less
+brilliant in hue, but the tune on my heartstrings kept up a note of pure
+bravado. I weeded the garden all afternoon, but stopped early, fed early,
+and went up-stairs to my room before the last sunset glow had faded off the
+dormer windows. Opening my old mahogany chest, I took out a bundle I had
+made up the day after the advent of Mother Cow and the calf, spread it out
+on the bed, and looked it over.
+
+In it was an incredible amount of lingerie, made of crepe de chine and
+lace, folded tightly and tied with a ribbon into a package not over a foot
+square. A comb and a brush of old ivory, which had set in its back a small
+mirror held in by a silver band, which father had purchased in Florence
+for me under a museum guaranty as a genuine Cellini work of art, were
+wrapped in a silk case, and a toothbrush and soap had occupied their
+respective oil-silk cases along with a tube of tooth paste and one of cold
+cream. Two pairs of soft, but strong, tan cotton stockings were tucked
+underneath the ribbon confining the lingerie, and a small prayer-book with
+both mine and my mother's name in it completed the--I hadn't exactly liked
+to call it a trousseau. It was all tied up in one of Adam's Romney
+handkerchiefs, which he had washed out one day in the spring branch and
+left hanging on a hickory sapling to dry, and which I had appropriated
+because I loved its riot of faded colors.
+
+"It is just about the size of his," I had said to myself as I had tied up
+its corners that day after my love adventure in the orchard under the
+chaperonage of Mother Cow, and I had laughed as I imagined Pan's face when
+he discovered that I had been so entirely unfemininely subservient to his
+command about light traveling. Suddenly I swept the bundle together and
+back in the chest, while a note of genuine fear swept into the song in my
+heart.
+
+"He'll write from New Orleans--he doesn't sail until to-morrow," I
+whispered as I quieted the discord and went down to prayers.
+
+    "I shall not want.
+      He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
+        he leadeth me beside the still waters.
+      He restoreth my soul:"
+
+intoned Uncle Cradd, and somehow the tumult in my heart was stilled for the
+night, and I could as usual take Pan into my prayer arms and ask God to
+keep him safe. I wonder how many women would really pray if there weren't
+men in the world to furnish them the theme!
+
+Also I wonder how it is possible for me to write about that following first
+week of May when I had to feel the chant die out of my heart and still
+live and help a lot of other live creatures, both people and animals, to go
+on breathing also.
+
+Each day Uncle Cradd failed to bring me a letter from the post-office, and
+after a week I ceased to look for one. I knew that Evan Adam Baldwin was on
+the high seas and that if he had not written before he sailed he never
+intended to write. My common sense kindly and plainly spoke this truth to
+my aching heart: Pan had been simply having a word adventure with me in
+character.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The beginning of the twentieth century has witnessed many startling
+inventions, reforms, evolutions, and revolutions, but mankind generally is
+not aware that the most remarkable result of many combined new forces is a
+woman whose intellect can go on functioning at the same time that her heart
+is aching with either requited or unrequited love. Just ten days after I
+had been jilted, instead of lying in a darkened room in hysterics, I went
+into a light corner of the barn, sat down on an upturned seed-bucket, took
+my farm-book on my knee, wet my pencil between my lips, and began to figure
+up the account between Evan Adam Baldwin and myself. First, I sat still for
+a long second and tried to set a price on myself the hour before I had
+first encountered him out on the Riverfield ribbon on the day I had made
+my entry into rural life. And think as hard as I could I couldn't think up
+a single thing I had done worth while to my race; so I had to write a great
+cipher against myself. Then in another column I set down the word "assets,"
+and after it I wrote, "The Golden Bird and family, eight hundred dollars."
+Then I thought intently back into the past and into the haircloth trunk and
+wrote, "Clothes, one hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+Then I sat for another long time and looked out the door to the Paradise
+Ridge across the Harpeth Valley, after which I smoothed the page, dated it,
+and again began to take stock of myself and the business. I listed the
+original investment of Mr. G. Bird and the ladies Leghorn, one of which was
+at that moment picking wheat from my pocket, on through their fifty
+progeny, for which I had established a price of twenty dollars per head,
+through the two lambkins I had bought from Rufus for ten dollars, Mother
+Cow and the calf, the hundred and fifty pearls in the incubators, half of
+which I had sold to Owen and Bess and ten of which I had sold to a real
+chicken dealer who knew Mr. G. Bird's pedigree and had come all the way
+from Georgia to buy them. The whole inventory, including the wheat I had
+paid Matthew for and the improvements I had made on the barn, or rather
+Adam had made, also including the prospects in the garden, amounted to
+eighteen hundred dollars. Then I thought still longer and finally after my
+own name wrote one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of "education." The
+total was nineteen hundred and fifty dollars, thus making a profit on my
+investments of about eight hundred dollars. After this calculation I sat
+and chewed the pencil a long time, then turned a fresh page, wrote, "Evan
+Adam Baldwin," on the one side, "Profit" in the middle, and a large cipher
+opposite.
+
+Then I closed the book forever with such decision that the Leghorn lady and
+Mrs. Ewe, who was helping her explore me, both jumped, and I rose to my
+feet.
+
+"I got eight hundred and fifty dollars out of the deal, and Evan Adam
+Baldwin only got a few mediocre and amateur kisses, which he shared with
+me, for all his hard labor in plowing and tilling and restoring Elmnest and
+me to the point of being of value in the scheme of things. I got the best
+of that deal and why should I sulk?" I said to myself in a firm and even
+tone of voice. I didn't.
+
+If I had worked like a couple of women when speeded up by a weird chant on
+my heartstrings, which I now recognized was just a part of the system used
+in my reorganization, I worked like five when my heart became perfectly
+dead and silent. I got out of my bed the very minute that the first gleam
+of consciousness came into my mind, before I could have a second to think
+about anything unprofitable, plunged into the old brass-bound cedar tub of
+cold water, which I had carried up from the spring in a bucket that matched
+it the night before, got into my corduroys and smock, and was out in the
+barn and at work before it would seem possible for a woman to more than
+open her eyes of understanding upon the world. All day long I weeded and
+hoed and harvested and fed and cleaned and marketed that farm until I fell
+dead between the posts of the old bed at night.
+
+I didn't pray. I knew God would understand.
+
+And through it all there was Matthew! The first week or two he remonstrated
+with me; then when he saw that I was possessed by the demon of work he just
+rolled up his sleeves, collected Polly and Bud, and helped. He promoted his
+best clerk in the office to a junior partnership, refused several important
+cases, bought the hundred-acre forest which joins Elmnest, which Aunt Mary
+had had in her family for generations, and which had been considered as
+waste land after the cedars had been cut off, and began to restore it. He
+never bothered me once in a sentimental way, and when he brought the plans
+of his house over on the knoll opposite Elmnest, Polly helped me enthuse
+and criticize them, and he went away seemingly content. His and Polly's
+Rhode Island Reds were rivaling my Leghorns in productiveness, and all of
+Riverfield seemed to have gone chicken mad. Mr. Spain traded a prize hog
+for a cock, and twelve black Minorca hens, and Mr. Buford brought the bride
+two settings of gray "Rocks" to start a college education for the bundle.
+
+"Do you know what the whole kit and biling is so busy about?" said Aunt
+Mary as she surveyed with pride a new hen-house that Bud had just finished,
+in which I saw the trap nests over which she had disputed with the
+commissioner of agriculture. "They were just woke up by that speech of
+Adam's, and they are getting ready to show him what Riverfield can do when
+he gets back. When did you say you expect him, honeybunch?"
+
+"I don't," I answered quietly.
+
+"Why, I thought Silas said you did," she answered absent-mindedly. "Now,
+you can have Bud, but not for keeps, because as I borned him I think I am
+entitled to work him." We all laughed as Bud and I betook ourselves and a
+large farm-basket full of late cabbage plants across to Elmnest.
+
+"Miss Ann, please ma'am, make mother let me go to town to-night with Mr.
+Matthew and stay with Miss Bess. All her linen chest has come, and I want
+to see it," Polly Corn-tassel waylaid us and pleaded. I went back and laid
+the case before her mother.
+
+"Well, I suppose it won't hurt her if all this marriage and giving in
+marriage don't get into her head. I aim to keep and work her at least two
+years longer to pay my trouble with her teething back," agreed Aunt Mary.
+"When did you say the wedding was going to be?"
+
+"June tenth," I answered.
+
+"I heard that Mr. Owen Murray talking to Mr. Spain about his wooded piece
+of land over by the big spring the other night. Looks like you are a pot
+of honey, sure enough, child, that draws all your friends to settle around
+you."
+
+"No, it's the back-to-the-land vogue, and this is the most beautiful part
+of the Harpeth Valley," I answered as I again began to depart with Bud and
+the cabbage plants.
+
+"Adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the Garden of Eden
+was located right here. It was when your locusts were in full bloom and I
+asked him if he had run down Eve anywhere. Are you sure you don't know when
+he'll come back to see us all?" Aunt Mary's blue eyes danced with
+merriment.
+
+"No," I answered, and went hastily back to Bud and left her muttering to
+herself, "Well, Silas _did_ say--"
+
+All afternoon I stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts
+behind Bud's hoe and refused even to think about Bess's wedding-chest. But
+at sunset I saw I must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of
+her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that I had sold and then borrowed
+back from her--or have a serious crisis in our friendship. I hadn't
+strength for that, and I had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise
+enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn't,
+though there was a positive uproar when Owen brought the whole Bird
+collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the
+dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as
+to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom.
+
+"Why is it, Matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here
+in the dark and not make me say a word?" I asked him as he brought me home
+in the after-midnight hush.
+
+"You've trained my heart into silence, Ann," he answered gently.
+
+"No!" I exclaimed, for I couldn't bear the thought of Matthew's big heart
+being silent too. Just then Polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat,
+fell off and had to be rescued. We put her out at home in a wilted
+condition from pure good times, and then Matthew took me on up to Elmnest.
+An old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black
+shadows, and Matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was
+quiet and well.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" I exclaimed as I ran to the side of the shed in
+which Mrs. Ewe and the lambs resided. "Strike your cigar-lighter quick,
+Matt."
+
+As Matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, I sank
+to my knees with a cry. There upon the grass lay one of my lambkins, and
+red blood was oozing from its woolly white throat. As I lifted it on my
+arm, its little body gave a shudder and then lay so still that I knew it
+was dead. Mother Ewe stood near in the shadow and gave a plaintive bleat as
+she came to my side.
+
+"Oh," I sobbed as I looked up at Matthew, "it's dead. What did it?"
+
+"A dog," answered Matthew, as he knelt beside me and laid the tiny dead
+lamb back on the ground.
+
+"Not Peckerwood Pup!" I exclaimed.
+
+"No, she's too young; some stray," answered Matthew as he look savagely
+around into the shadows.
+
+"It's the littlest one, and she licked my hand the last thing before I
+left. I can't bear it all, Matthew--this is too much for me," I said, and I
+sobbed into my hands as I sank down into a heap against the side of the
+bereaved sheep mother, who was still uttering her plaintive moans of
+question.
+
+I say now and I shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in
+the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who
+has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows
+her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms.
+Matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his
+breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel
+that a new day could dawn upon the world. I think from the way I huddled to
+his strength that he knew that I had given up the fight and that his hour
+was at hand.
+
+"Do you want me now, Ann?" he asked me; gently as he pressed his cheek
+against my hair.
+
+"If you want me, take me and help me find that dog to-morrow," I answered
+as I again reached out my hand and put it for the last time on the pathetic
+little woolly head. I couldn't hold back the sob.
+
+"Go in the house to bed, dear, for you are completely worn out. I'll bury
+the lamb and look for any traces that may help us to find the savage," said
+Matthew as he drew me to my feet and with quiet authority led me to the
+back door and opened it for me. For a second I let him take me again into
+his strong arms, but I wilted there and I simply could not raise my lips to
+his. The first time I remember kissing Matthew Berry was at his own tenth
+birthday party, and he had dropped a handkerchief behind me that I had
+failed to see as all of the budding flower and chivalry of Hayesville stood
+in a ring in his mother's drawing-room.
+
+"Dear old Matt," I murmured to myself as I again fell dead between the
+posts of the ancestral bed.
+
+The next morning I awoke to a new world--or rather I turned straight about
+and went back into my own proper scheme of existence. At the crack of dawn
+I wakened and set my muscles for the spring from my pillows, then I
+stretched my arms, yawned, snuggled my cheek into those same pillows, and
+deliberately went to sleep, covering up my head with the old embroidered
+counter-pane to shut out from my ears a clarion crow from beyond my
+windows. When I next became conscious old Rufus' woolly head was peering
+anxiously into my room door, and I judged from the length of the shadows
+that the sun cast from the windows that it must be after ten o'clock.
+
+"Am you sick?" he inquired with belligerent solicitude.
+
+"No, Rufus, and I'm going back to sleep. Call me in time to have dinner
+with father and Uncle Cradd," I answered as I again burrowed into the
+pillows.
+
+"I give that there rooster and family a bucket of feed," said Rufus
+begrudgingly, and he stood as if waiting to be praised for thus burying the
+hatchet that he had been mentally brandishing over the neck of the enemy.
+
+I made no response, but stretched my tired limbs out between the silky old
+sheets and again lost consciousness.
+
+The next time I became intelligent it was when Polly's soft arm was slid
+under my neck and her red lips applied to my cheek.
+
+"Miss Ann, are you ill?" she questioned frantically. "Mr. Matthew and I
+have been here for hours and have fed and attended to everything. He made
+me come up because he was afraid you might be dead."
+
+"I am, Polly, and now watch me come back to life," I said as I sat up and
+blinked at the sun coming in through the western window, thus proclaiming
+the time as full afternoon.
+
+"We found Mr. G. Bird and all of the other--" Polly was beginning to say
+when I cut her short.
+
+"Polly, dear, please go tell Matthew to ride down to the bank and telephone
+Bess that I'm coming in to stay a week with her and to invite Belle and
+Owen and the rest to dinner. By the time he gets back I'll be ready to go."
+As I spoke I threw the sheet from me and started to arise, take up my life,
+and walk.
+
+"But who'll attend to the chickens and--" Polly fairly gasped.
+
+"I don't know and I don't care, and if you want to go in to dinner with us,
+Polly, you had better hurry on, for you'll have to beg your mother hard," I
+said, and at the suggestion Polly fairly flew.
+
+I don't exactly know what Polly told Matthew about me, but his face was a
+study as I descended elegantly clad and ready to go to town with him.
+
+"Good, dear!" he said as I raised my lips to his and gave him a second
+edition of that ring-around-rosy kiss. "I knew you would wear yourself out.
+I have telephoned Owen to motor out that young Belgian that Baldwin got
+down to run my farm, and he'll take charge of everything while you rest."
+
+"I don't care whether he comes or not," I said as I walked towards the
+library door to say good-by to my parent twins, who hardly noticed me at
+all on account of a knotty disagreement in some old Greek text they were
+digging over.
+
+"Well, you needn't worry about--" Matthew was continuing to say, with the
+deepest uncertainty in his face and voice.
+
+"I won't," I answered. "Did Bess say she could get enough people together
+to dance to-night?"
+
+"We'll all go out to the country club and have a great fling," said
+Matthew, with the soothing tone of voice that one would use to a friend
+temporarily mentally deranged. "Hope Mother Corn-tassel lets Polly go."
+
+"There she is waiting at the gate for us with her frills in a bundle. Swoop
+her up, Matt, and fly for fear she is getting off without Aunt Mary's
+seeing her. Aunt Mary is so bent on keeping Polly's milking hand in."
+
+"That young Belgian says he's a good milker, and you needn't worry about--"
+
+"I won't," I again answered Matthew, and there was snap enough in my eyes
+and voice to make him whistle under his breath as he literally swooped up
+Polly, and they both had the good sense to begin to talk about town affairs
+and leave unmentioned all rural matters.
+
+Half-way into town Matthew swapped me for his Belgian in Owen's car, and
+Polly and I went on in with Owen and Bess, while Matthew returned out the
+Riverfield ribbon to install the rescuer of Elmnest.
+
+"Oh, Ann, this is delicious," said Bess as she came back with me to cuddle
+me and ask questions. "But what are--"
+
+"Bess," I said, looking her straight in the face with determination, "I am
+going to marry Matt two days before you marry Owen, though he doesn't know
+it yet, and if you talk about Elmnest to me I'll go and stay with Belle
+this week."
+
+"How perfectly lovely, and how tired you are, poor dear!" Bess
+congratulated and exclaimed all in the same breath, then imparted both my
+announcement and my injunction to Owen on the front seat. I didn't look at
+Polly while Owen was laughing and exclaiming, but when I did she looked
+queer and quiet; however, I didn't let that at all affect the nice crisp
+crust that had hardened on me overnight. And I must say that if Corn-tassel
+wasn't happy that evening surrounded by the edition of masculine society
+that Matt had so carefully expurgated for her, she ought to have been.
+
+By that time I had told Matthew about his approaching marriage, accepted
+his bear-hug of joy, delivered before Bess and Polly and Owen and Belle,
+and I had been congratulated and received back into the bosom of my friends
+with great joy and hilarity.
+
+"Now I can take care of you forever and ever, Ann," whispered Matthew in
+his good-night, with his lips against my ear. And there in his strong,
+sustaining arms, even though limp with fatigue, I knew I never did, could,
+or would, love anybody like I loved him. I don't really suppose I did hear
+Polly sob on her pillow beside mine, where she had insisted on reposing.
+She must have been all right, for she was gone out into the rural district
+with Matthew before I was awake the next morning.
+
+After Annette had served mine and Bess's chocolate in Bess's bedroom we
+settled down to the real seriousness of trousseau talk, which lasted for
+many long hours.
+
+"Now if I sell you back all the things of yours I haven't worn for two
+hundred and fifty dollars that will leave you over three hundred in the
+bank to get a few wash frocks and hats and things to last you until you are
+enough married to Matthew to use his money freely," said Bess after about
+an hour of discussion and admiration of her own half-finished trousseau.
+
+"Yes; I should say those things would be worth about two hundred and fifty
+dollars now that they are third-hand," I answered Bess's excited eyes,
+giving her a look of well-crusted affection, for there are not many women
+in the world, with unlimited command of the material that Bess has, who
+would not have offered me a spiritual hurt by trying to give me back my
+thousand dollars' worth of old clothes which she had not needed in the
+first place when she bought them.
+
+"Now, that's all settled, and we'll begin to stretch that three hundred
+dollars to its limit. We won't care if things do tear, just so they look
+smart until you and Matthew get to New York. Matthew won't be the first
+bridegroom to go into raptures over a thirty-nine-cent bargain silk made
+up by a sixty-dollar dressmaker. I'm giving Owen a few deceptions in that
+line myself. That gray and purple tissue splits if you look at it, and I
+got it all for three dollars. Felicia made it up mostly with glue, I think,
+and I will be a dream in it--a dream that dissolves easily. Let's go
+shopping." As she thus led me into the maze of dishonest trousseau-buying,
+Bess began to ring for Annette.
+
+Of course most women in the world will refuse to admit that shopping can
+arouse them from any kind of deadness that the sex is heir to, but a few
+frank ones, like myself, for instance, will say such to be the case. For
+three weeks I gave myself up to a perfect debauch of clothes, and ended off
+each day's spree by dancing myself into a state of exhaustion. Everybody in
+Hayesville wanted to give Bess and me parties, and most of them did, that
+is, as many as we could get in at the rate of three a day between
+dressmakers and milliners and other clothing engagements. Owen got
+perfectly furious and exhausted, but Matthew kept in an angelic frame of
+mind through it all. I think the long days with Polly out in the open
+helped him a lot, though at times I detected a worried expression on the
+faces of them both, and I felt sure that they were dying to tell me that it
+had been a case of the razor from Rufus' shoe between him and the Belgian
+or that the oil was of the grade that explodes incubators, but I gave them
+no encouragement and only inquired casually from time to time if the
+parental twins were alive. Polly even tried me out with a bunch of roses,
+which I knew came from the old musk clump in the corner of the garden which
+I had seen rebudded, but I thanked her coldly and immediately gave them to
+Belle's mother. I saw Matthew comforting her in the distance, and his face
+was tenderly anxious about me all the rest of the evening.
+
+"Dear, are we going to be--be married in town at a church?" Matthew
+inquired timidly one afternoon as he drove me home from a devastated hat
+shop on the avenue, in which Bess and I had been spending the day.
+
+"No, Matt dear, at Elmnest," I answered kindly, as a bride, no matter how
+worn out, ought to answer a groom, though Bess says that a groom ought to
+expect to be snapped every time he speaks for ten days before the wedding.
+"As long as I have got a home that contains two masculine parents I will
+have to be married in it. I'll go out the morning of the wedding, and you
+and Polly fix everything and invite everybody in Riverfield, but just the
+few people here in town you think we ought to have, not more than a dozen.
+Have it at five o'clock." I thought then that I fixed that hour because
+everybody would hate it because of the heat and uncertainty as to style of
+clothes.
+
+"All right, dear," answered Matthew, carefully, as if handling
+conversational eggs.
+
+"Miss Ann, where do you want us to fix the wedding--er--bell and altar?"
+Polly ventured to ask timidly a few days later.
+
+"The parlor, of course, Polly. I hate that room, and it is as far from the
+barn as possible. Now don't bother me any more about it," I snapped, and
+sent her flying to Matthew in consternation. Later I saw them poring over
+the last June-bride number of "The Woman's Review," and I surmised the kind
+of a wedding I was in for. That day I tried on a combination of tull, lace,
+and embroidery at Felicia's that tried my soul as well as my body.
+
+"It's no worse than any other wedding-dress I ever saw; take it off quick,
+Madame," I snapped as crossly as I dared at the poor old lady, who had
+gowned me from the cradle to the--I was about to say grave.
+
+"Eh, la la, _mais_, you are _tres deficile_--difficult," she murmured
+reproachfully.
+
+"Any more so than Bess?" I demanded.
+
+"_Non_, perhaps _non_," she answered, with a French shrug.
+
+With beautiful tact Matthew fussed with his throttle, which I couldn't see
+stuck at all, the entire time he was driving me home, and left me with a
+careful embrace and also with relief in his face that I hadn't exploded
+over him. Owen is not like that to Bess; he just pours gas on her
+explosions and fans the resulting flame until it is put out by tears in his
+arms.
+
+"Let's never get married at the same time any more, Ann," groaned Bess as
+Annette tried to put us both to bed that night before we fell dead on her
+hands.
+
+"Don't speak to me!" was my answer as nearly as I can remember.
+
+"I'll be glad to get Bess away from your influence," raged Owen at me the
+next day when I very nearly stepped on one of the little chickens that he
+was having run in and out from the conservatory.
+
+"You'll want to bring her back in a week if both your tempers don't
+improve," was my cutting reply as this time I lifted another of his small
+pets with the toe of my slipper and literally flung it across the room.
+
+"Great guns!" exploded Owen, as he retreated into the conservatory and
+shut the door.
+
+The next night was the sixth of June and the night of my wedding eve. All
+Bess's bridesmaids and groomsmen were dining with her to rehearse her
+wedding and to have a sort of farewell bat with Matthew and me.
+
+"What about your and Ann's wedding to Matthew, Miss Polly?" I heard Cale
+Johnson ask Polly as she and Matthew were untangling a bolt of wide,
+white-satin ribbon that I had tangled. "All the show to be of rustics?"
+
+"Nobody but Polly is going to stand by us," said Matthew, looking
+cautiously around to see if I was listening. "Ann doesn't believe in making
+much fuss over a wedding."
+
+"I didn't know I was to be in it until Miss Bess took me to be fitted--oh,
+it is a dream of a dress, isn't it, Mr. Matthew?" said Polly, with her
+enthusiasm also tempered by a glance in my direction.
+
+"It sure is," answered Matthew, with the greatest approval, as he regarded
+Polly with parental pride.
+
+"Well, I'm glad I'm invited to see it," said Cale as he glanced at Polly
+tenderly. "I mean to be at the wedding, Matt," he added politely. Cale was
+to be best man with Polly as maid of honor at Bess's wedding, and he had
+been standing and sitting close at Polly's side for more than ten days.
+
+"Let's try it all over again, everybody," called Bess's wearied voice,
+interrupting Polly's enthusiastic description of ruffles.
+
+The wedding day was a nightmare. Annette and the housemaid and Bess and a
+girl from Madame Felicia's packed up three trunks full of my clothes and
+sent them all to the station.
+
+"I wish I never had to see them again," I said viciously under my breath as
+the expressmen carried out the last trunk.
+
+"Now, dear, in these two suitcases are your wedding things and your
+going-away gown. Your dress is in the long box and we will send them all
+out early in the morning in my car. Matthew will drive us out as soon as we
+can get ready," Bess had said the night before, as she sank on my bed and
+spread out with fatigue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The next morning it took Annette until ten o'clock and a shower of tears to
+get Bess and me to sit up and take our coffee. She said the decorators were
+downstairs beginning on Bess's wedding decorations and that the sun was
+shining on my wedding-day.
+
+"Well, I wish it had delayed itself a couple of hours. I'm too sleepy to
+get married," I grumbled as I sat up to take the tray of coffee on my
+knees.
+
+"Owen is a darling," I heard Bess murmur from her bed, which was against
+the wall and mine as our rooms opened into each other. I also heard a
+rustle of paper and smelled the perfume of flowers.
+
+"This is for Mademoiselle from Monsieur Berry," said Annette, as she
+triumphantly produced a white box tied with white ribbons that lay in the
+center of a bunch of wild field-roses.
+
+"Take it away and let me drink my coffee," I said, and I could see
+Annette's French eyes snap as she laid down the offering from Matthew and
+went to attend upon Bess.
+
+"Dear Matt," I murmured when I had consumed the coffee and discovered the
+long string of gorgeous pearls in the white box. "Come on, Bess, let's
+begin to get married and be done with it," I called to her as I wearily
+arose. "What time did Polly say she and Matthew had decided to marry me?" I
+asked as I went into my bath.
+
+"Five o'clock, and it's almost twelve now," answered Bess in a voice of
+panic as I heard things begin to fly into place in her room.
+
+Despite the superhuman efforts and patience of Annette and two housemaids,
+directed from below by Owen and Judge Rutherford, it was half-past two
+o'clock before I was ready to descend to the car in which Matthew had been
+sitting, patiently waiting in the sunshine of his wedding day for almost
+two hours.
+
+"Plenty of time," he said cheerily, as I sank into the seat beside him, and
+Bess and Owen climbed in behind us. Owen's chauffeur took Judge Rutherford
+in Owen's car, and Annette perched her prim self on the front seat beside
+the wheel.
+
+"Oh, Matt, there is nobody in the world like you," I said as I cast myself
+on his patience and imperturbability and also the strength of his broad
+shoulder next mine. I could positively hear Bess and Owen's joy over this
+bride-like manifestation, which the wind took back to them as we went
+sailing out of town towards the Riverfield ribbon.
+
+And to their further joy I put my cheek down against Matthew's throttle arm
+and closed my eyes so that I did not see anything of the twenty-mile
+progression out to Elmnest. I only opened them when we arrived in
+Riverfield at about half after three o'clock.
+
+Was the village out to greet me? It was not. Every front door was closed,
+and every front shutter shut, and I might have felt that some dire
+disapproval was being expressed of me and my wedding if I had not seen
+smoke fairly belching from every kitchen chimney, and if I hadn't known
+that each house was filled with the splash of vigorous tubbing for which
+the kitchen stoves and wash boilers were supplying the hot water.
+
+"Bet at least ten pounds of soap has gone up in lather," said Matthew as he
+turned and explained the situation to Bess and Owen after I had explained
+it to him.
+
+At the door of Elmnest stood Polly in a gingham dress, but with both ends
+of her person in bridal array, from the white satin bows on the looped up
+plats to the white silk stockings and satin slippers, greeting us with
+relief and enthusiasm. Beside her stood Aunt Mary and the parent twins,
+also Bud, in the gray suit with a rose in his button-hole.
+
+Matthew handed me out and into their respective embraces, while he also
+gave Polly a bundle of dry-goods from which I could see white satin ribbon
+bursting.
+
+"Everything is ready," she confided to him.
+
+"I knew it would be, Corn-tassel," he answered, with an expression of
+affectionate confidence and pride.
+
+Then from the embrace of Uncle Cradd I walked straight through the back
+door towards the barn, leaving both Bess and Annette in a state of wild
+remonstrance, with the wedding paraphernalia all being carried up the
+stairs by Bud and Rufus. Looking neither to the right nor to the left, I
+made my way to the barn-door and then stopped still--dead still.
+
+It was no longer my barn--it was merely the entrance to a model poultry
+farm that spread out acres and acres of model houses and runs behind it.
+Chickens, both white and red, were clucking and working in all the pens,
+and nowhere among them could I see the Golden Bird.
+
+"I hope he's dead, too," I said as I turned on my heel and, without a
+word, walked back to the house and up to my room, past Polly and Matthew,
+who stood at the barn-door, their faces pale with anxiety.
+
+When I considered that I had been able for months to clothe myself with
+decency and leave my room in less than fifteen minutes, I could not see why
+time dragged so for me when being clothed by Annette and Aunt Mary. True,
+Aunt Mary paused to sniff into her handkerchief every few minutes or to
+listen to Annette's French raptures as she laid upon me each foolish
+garment up unto the long swath of heathenish tulle she was beginning to
+arrange when an interruption occurred in the shape of Rufus, who put his
+head in the door and mysteriously summoned Polly, who had come in to
+exhibit her silk muslin frills, in which she was the incarnation of young
+love's dream.
+
+"You are beautiful, darling," I had just said, with the first warmth in my
+voice I had felt for many days, when Rufus appeared and Polly departed to
+leave Annette and Aunt Mary to the task of the tulle and orange-blossoms.
+They took their time, and it was only five minutes to five when Bess came
+in to get her procession all marshalled.
+
+"Come down the back steps, darling, and let's all cool off on the back
+porch," she advised. "It is terribly hot up here under the roof, and Polly
+and Matthew say they have decided to come in from the back door so
+everybody will have a better view of you. How beautiful you are!"
+
+As directed, I descended and stood spread out like a white peacock on the
+back porch.
+
+"Now call Matthew and Polly," Bess directed Annette.
+
+For several minutes we waited.
+
+"Monsieur Berry is not here," finally reported Annette, with fine dramatic
+effect of her outspread hands.
+
+"Tell Owen to find him," commanded Bess. "It is five minutes late now, and
+they must make that seven-twenty New York train. Hurry!"
+
+Annette departed while Aunt Mary came to the back door and looked out
+questioningly.
+
+"Great guns, Bess, where is Matt?" demanded Owen as he came around the
+house with his eyes and hair wild.
+
+"Where is Polly? she'll know!" I answered tranquilly.
+
+"I searched Mademoiselle Polly, and she is also not here," answered
+Annette, again running down the back stairs. From the long parlor and hall
+came an excited buzz, and Aunt Mary came out upon the back porch entirely
+this time.
+
+"Every one of you go and look for them and leave me here quiet if you don't
+want me to have a brain storm," I said positively. "They have probably gone
+to feed the chickens."
+
+Not risking me to make good my threat, Bess and Annette and Aunt Mary and
+Owen and Bud disappeared in as many different directions. They left me
+standing alone out on the old porch, along the eaves of which rioted a
+rose, literally covered with small pink blossoms that kept throwing
+generous gusts of rosy petals down upon my tulle and lace and the bouquet
+of exotics I held in my hand. Across the valley the skyline of Paradise
+Ridge seemed to be holding down huge rosy clouds that were trying to bubble
+up beyond it.
+
+Suddenly I drew aside the tulle from my face, dropped my bouquet, and
+stretched out my arms to the sunset.
+
+"I will lift up mine eyes to the hills--Oh, Pan!" I said in a soft agony of
+supplication as I felt the crust around me begin a cosmic upheaval.
+
+"Well, this looks like a Romney bundle and my woman to follow into the
+woods. You know I won't have this kind of a wedding," suddenly fluted a
+stormy voice from the other side of the rose vine as Pan came up to the
+bottom of the steps.
+
+"Why--why," I began to say, and then stopped, because the storm was still
+bursting over my head from Pan, who was attired in his usual Roycroft
+costume and had in one hand the Romney bundle and in the other the usual
+white bundle of herbs. Also as usual he was guiltless of a hat, and the
+crests were unusually long and ruffled.
+
+"You look foolish, and I won't marry you that way. Go straight up-stairs
+and put on real clothes, get your bundle, and come on. I want to eat supper
+over on Sky Rock, and it is seven miles, and you'll have to cook it. I'm
+hungry," he stormed still more furiously.
+
+"Everybody is inside waiting, and it's not your--"
+
+"Well, tell 'em all to come out in the open. I won't take a mate in a
+house, even if it has to be done with this foolish paper," he continued to
+rage as he sought in the bandana bundle and produced an official document
+with a red tape on it. "You go and put on your clothes, and I'll break up
+this foolishness and get 'em in the yard."
+
+"But wait--you don't understand. You--"
+
+"You've got all the rest of your life to explain disobeying me like this
+when I expressly wrote you just what I wanted you to--" Pan went on with
+his raging. At this juncture Uncle Cradd appeared at the back door in mild
+excitement.
+
+"Nancy, my child, our friends are growing impatient, and is there anything
+the--"
+
+But here he was interrupted by a clamor of voices that fairly poured its
+volume around the corner of the house. In two seconds it explained itself
+by its very appearance. First came Matthew, walking slowly, and in his arms
+he carried a soaked bundle which he held to his breast as tenderly, I was
+sure, as young Mrs. Buford was holding the blue bundle in the parlor, and
+two long plaits hung down over his arm. From between him and the bundle
+there came a feeble squawking and fluttering of wings. From them all poured
+rivulets of water, and mingled with the squawks were weak gurgles. As I
+looked, Matthew stopped and lifted the bundle closer on his breast,
+disclosing its identity as that of Polly, and buried his face in the
+soaked hair while they all stood dripping together as the rest of us stood
+perfectly silent and still.
+
+"That fool Henri let the Golden Bird get away, and he flew across the river
+and fell in a tangle of undergrowth. Rufus called Polly, and she plunged
+right in after him. Her dress caught on the same snag and God, Ann, they
+were being sucked under just as I got to them. She's still unconscious." In
+some ways as unconscious as was the Corn-tassel, Matthew began to press hot
+kisses on the face under his chin which brought forth a feeble choke.
+
+"Lay her down on the porch, and I'll show you how to empty her lungs,
+Berry," said Adam, laying down his bundle and taking charge of the
+situation, as all the rest, even capable Aunt Mary, still stood helpless
+before the catastrophe. Reluctantly, Matthew obeyed.
+
+"Uncle Cradd, go in the house and tell them all what has happened, and ask
+them all to come out on the cool of the lawn until we can have the
+wedding. It will be in just a few minutes, tell them," I said, with the
+brain that had taken the incubator eggs to bed with Bess and me beginning
+to act rapidly. "Let me speak to you just a second, Matt," I said, and drew
+the dazed and dripping bridegroom to one side.
+
+"Matthew," I said very quietly and slowly so that I would not have to
+repeat the words, "I'm not going to marry you at all, but I'm going to
+marry Evan Baldwin. I'll tell you all about it when I come back from my
+honeymoon with him. You help me put it through and then stay right here and
+look after Polly. She may suffer terribly from shock."
+
+"Oh, God, Ann, my heart turned over in my breast and kicked when I saw her
+sink, and for a minute I couldn't find her," Matthew said as he gave a
+dripping shudder that shook some of the water off him and on my tulle. To
+the announcement of the loss of a bride he gave no heed at all, for at that
+moment, as Pan lifted the drenched bundle across his knees and patted it,
+a faint voice moaned out Matthew's name, and he flew to receive the revived
+Polly in his arms.
+
+"Now, hold her that way until I am sure I have established complete
+respiration," commanded Pan. "You women begin to take these wet rags off of
+her. Get two blankets." At which command the rest of the bridal party flew
+to work in different directions and I with them. Bess and I arrived in my
+room at the same moment, and she seized the two blankets I drew from the
+chest and departed without waiting for words. As I drew out the blankets,
+something else rolled to the floor, and I saw it was my Romney bundle,
+packed weeks before my death.
+
+Its suggestion was not to be denied. I stopped just where I was, and in two
+minutes my strong hands ripped that tulle and lace and chiffon from my back
+without waiting to undo hooks and eyes. In another three minutes I was into
+a pair of the tan cotton stockings and the flat shoes, which Pan had made
+me that rainy day in the barn, had on my corduroys and a linen smock, and
+was running down to my wedding with wings of the wind.
+
+When I reached the back porch I found Polly sitting up on the floor, with
+Matthew's arms around her, and the entire wedding-party standing beside the
+back steps, looking on and ejaculating with thankfulness. Old Parson
+Henderson stood near, beaming down benedictions for the rescue, and I
+decided that they were all in a daze in which anything could be put over on
+them.
+
+"Here's my bundle and me," I whispered to Pan, as he stood regarding the
+young recovered squaw proudly. "Hand the license to Parson Hendricks. I'll
+make him go on and marry us and get away before anybody puts me back into
+tulle."
+
+"As Polly is all right now we'll have the wedding, for it's getting late,
+and we want to get across to the Paradise Ridge to camp," said Adam, with
+the fluty command in his voice which always gets attention and obedience.
+As he spoke he put down his bundle, gave Parson Hendricks the document, and
+drew me beside him. I kept my bundle in my hand and stood with my other in
+his.
+
+"Why, I didn't know that--" the old parson began to splutter while a murmur
+of surprise and question began to arise among the hitherto hypnotized
+wedding-guests. Judge Rutherford stood apart with the twin parents showing
+them some book treasure he had unearthed for father, and I don't think that
+either one of my natural guardians was at my wedding except in body.
+
+At the critical moment dear old Matt did rise to the occasion, as did Polly
+also, with a crimson glow coming into her drenched cheeks, pallid only a
+second before, and a light like sunrise on a violet bank coming into her
+eyes.
+
+"She's always intended to marry Baldwin. I knew all about it. Go on!"
+Matthew commanded, as he supported Polly in her blankets on wobbly bare
+feet.
+
+During the resuscitation of Polly, Owen Murray, true to his new passion for
+the Leghorn family, had been reviving Mr. G. Bird and now with regard for
+decorum, he set him quietly upon his feet. Did the Golden Bird run like a
+coward from the scene of the catastrophe of his making? He did not. He
+deliberately stretched his wings, gave a mighty crow, and walked over and
+began to peck in my smock-pockets at corn that had lain there many long
+weeks for him.
+
+"Go on, Parson," commanded Pan again, impatiently, and then standing
+together in the fading sunlight, Pan, Mr. G. Bird, and I were married.
+
+Did Pan allow me to stay and make satisfactory explanations of my conduct
+to my friends and enjoy the wedding festivities so carefully copied out of
+the "Review" by Polly and Matthew? He did not. Immediately after the
+ceremony he picked up his two bundles and turned to all of our assembled
+friends.
+
+"We'll be back in a few weeks, and then I'll show you what I learned in
+Argentina. We have to hurry now to get across the valley. Some of the fine
+sheep over at Plunkett's are down with foot rash, and I want to be there by
+noon. Luck to you all." With these words Pan led me around the corner of
+the house, through the old garden, and out into the woods, Mr. G. Bird
+still following at the smock-pocket.
+
+"We'll have to go back and lock him up; he'll follow me," I said, as I
+paused and took the Golden Bird's proud head in my hand and let him peck at
+a dull gold circle on my third finger, which, I am sure, Pan himself had
+hammered out of a nugget for me.
+
+"No, let's take him. I want to show him over at Plunkett's and then in
+Providence and Hillsboro, to grade up their poultry. I doubt if there's his
+equal in America," answered Pan as he went on ahead of me to break the
+undergrowth into which he was leading me underneath the huge old trees.
+
+"I didn't write you to let that fool Belgian prune the whole place like
+that," Pan remarked as we paused at old Tilting Rock and looked down upon
+the orderly and repaired Elmnest in the sunset glow.
+
+"Write?" I murmured weakly, while my mind accused Uncle Cradd, and rightly
+too, as I learned later after a search in his pockets.
+
+"Wasn't any use sending any letter after that New Orleans one, because I
+traveled on the return trip all the way myself. Still you did pretty well
+to get the wedding and all ready at the hour I set, even if you did make
+that awful flummery mistake. I'll forgive you even that after I get over
+the shock of seeing you look that way."
+
+"The hour you set?" I again murmured a weak question.
+
+"I thought of writing you to get ready by nine o'clock in the morning, but
+I knew I'd have to stop in Hayesville for that bit of red tape, so I said
+five o'clock and had to hustle to make it. I knew you'd be ready. Now
+you'll have to travel, for we have five miles to go and it takes the pot
+two hours to simmer. Are you hungry?"
+
+I hadn't the strength to answer. I had just enough to pad along behind at
+his heels with Mr. G. Bird at mine. However, as I padded, I suddenly felt
+return that strength of ten women which I had put from me the morning I
+fled from the empty Elmnest, and I knew that it had come upon me to abide.
+
+I needed every bit of the energy of ten ordinary women to keep up with
+Pan's commands, as I helped him make camp beside a cool spring that bubbled
+out of a rock in a little cove that was swung high up on the side of
+Paradise Ridge. I washed the bundle of greens he had brought to the wedding
+and set them to simmer with the inevitable black walnut kernels in a pot
+that he produced from under a log in the edge of the woods, along with a
+couple of earthen bowls like the ones he kept secreted in the spring-house
+at Elmnest.
+
+"Got 'em all over ten States," he answered, as I questioned him with
+delight at the presence of our old friends. Then while I crouched and
+stirred, he took his long knife out, cut great armfuls of cedar boughs,
+threw them in a shadow at the foot of a tall old oak, and with a bundle of
+sticks swept upon them a great pile of dry leaves into the form of a huge
+nest. The golden glow was just fading as I lifted the pot and poured his
+portion in his bowl, then mine in the other, while he cut the black loaf he
+had taken from his bundle into hunks with his knife. It was after seven
+o'clock, and the crescent moon hung low by the ridge, waiting for the sun
+to take its complete departure before setting in for its night's joy-ride
+up the sky. It was eight before Pan finished his slow browsing in his bowl
+and came over to crouch with me out on the ledge of rock that overlooked
+the world below us. Clusters of lights in nests of gray smoke were dotted
+around over the valley, and I knew the nearest one was Riverfield; indeed I
+could see a bunch of lights a little way apart from the rest, and I felt
+sure that they were lighting the remaining revelers at my wedding-feast at
+Elmnest. The Golden Bird had gone sensibly to roost on one of the low
+limits of the old oak, and he reminded me of the white blur of Polly's
+wedding bell, which I had caught a glimpse of as I ran through the hall at
+Elmnest.
+
+"_I am thy child_," crooned Pan, with a new note to his chant that
+immediately started on my heartstrings. "And I'm tired," he added as he
+stretched himself on the rock beside me, laid his head on my breast, and
+nuzzled his lips into my bare throat.
+
+"I'm going to lift the crests and look at the tips of your ears, Pan," I
+said as I held him tight.
+
+"Better not," he mocked me.
+
+I did, and the tips were--I never intend to tell.
+
+The lights were twinkling out in the valley one by one, and the young moon
+made the purple blackness below us only faintly luminous when Pan drew me
+closer and then into the very edge of the world itself, and pointed down
+into the soft darkness.
+
+"We are all like that, we natives of this great land--asleep in the midst
+of a silvery mist, while the rest of the world is in the blaze of hell.
+We've got to wake up and take them to our breast, to nourish and warm and
+save them. There'll be just you and I and a few others to call the rest of
+our people until they hear and value and work," he said as he settled me
+against him so that the twain chants of our heartstrings became one.
+
+"I'll follow you through the woods and help you call, Adam," I said softly,
+with my lips under the red crest nearest to me.
+
+"And I'll bring you back here to nest and stay with you until your young
+are on their feet, with their eyes open," Pan crooned against my lips.
+"Dear God, what a force unit one woman and one man can create!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE FIREFLY OF FRANCE
+
+_By_ MARION POLK ANGELLOTTI
+
+
+This is not a story of laughter or tears, of shock or depression. It has no
+manufactured gloom. It preaches no reform. It has not a single social
+problem around which the characters move and argue and agonize. No reader
+need lie awake at night wondering what the author meant; all she intends to
+convey goes over the top with the first sight of the printed words. The
+story invites the reader to be thrilled, and dares him (or her) to weep.
+
+Briefly, "The Firefly of France" is in the manner of the romance--in the
+manner of Dumas, of Walter Scott. It is a story of love, mystery, danger,
+and daring. It opens in the gorgeous St. Ives Hotel in New York and ends
+behind the Allied lines in France. The story gets on its way on the first
+page, and the interest is continuous and increasing until the last page.
+And it is all beautifully done.
+
+The Philadelphia Record says: "No more absorbing romance of the war has
+been written than 'The Firefly of France.' In a sprightly, spontaneous way
+the author tells a story that is pregnant with the heroic spirit of the
+day. There is a blending of mystery, adventure, love and high endeavor that
+will charm every reader."
+
+_12mo, 363 pages_
+_Illustrated by Grant T. Reynard_
+_Price $1.40_
+
+At All Bookstores
+Published by
+
+THE NEW CENTURY CO.
+
+353 Fourth Avenue
+New York City
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FILM FOLK
+
+"Close-ups" of the Men, Women and Children who make the "Movies."
+
+_By_ ROB WAGNER
+
+
+A book of humor and entertaining facts. It is a sort of Los Angeles
+Canterbury Tales wherein appears the stories, told in the first person, of
+the handsome film actor whose beauty is fatal to his comfort; of the child
+wonder; the studio mother; the camera man, who "shoots the films"; the
+scenario writer; the "extra" man and woman, whose numbers are as the sands
+of the sea; the publicity man, who "rings the bells," etc., etc.
+
+All the stories are located in or near Los Angeles, a section more densely
+populated with makers of "movies" than any other section on earth. The
+author lives there, he has been in sympathetic contact with these votaries
+of this new art since its beginning, and his statements are entirely
+trustworthy.
+
+"Film Folk" is not a series of actual biographies of individuals; the
+author in each case presents an actor, a director or one of the other
+characters for the sake of concreteness and to carry out the story-form,
+and he contrives to set forth in the course of the book the entire
+movie-making world. The reader gets a clear idea of how the films are made
+and he is immensely entertained with the accounts of the manners and
+customs of the inhabitants of the vast movie villages--manners and customs
+unique in many respects.
+
+The stories are told in a style as easy to read as the author is
+good-humored.
+
+_8vo, 356 pages_
+_Illustrated from photographs_
+_Price $2.00_
+
+At All Bookstores
+Published by
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+353 Fourth Avenue
+New York City
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Golden Bird, by Maria Thompson Daviess
+
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