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
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.
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.
"Of course, Ann, youdorealize 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.
A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while Adam stood over her with something in his armsA 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.
"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.
"ItwasFriday 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.
"Icankeep 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, Iamgrowing 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.