Part 3 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+pping 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?”