"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.

n.o.body can take the house, because it is. .h.i.tched 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 a.s.sured 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 c.o.c.k. "'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 pa.s.s.

"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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt. 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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 a.s.sured 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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, n.o.body 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 a.s.sistance 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 ch.o.r.e 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 ap.r.o.n.

I hadn't broken Pan to Matthew, and I didn't know exactly why. Perhaps I didn't quite believe in the red-headed p.e.c.k.e.rwood 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 cla.s.sic 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, m.u.f.fins 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 appet.i.te 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 pa.s.sed the m.u.f.fins 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,"