her to go and see the pig though she had
plenty of opportunities later, had she so desired.

The twilight shut down and Warren added more fuel to the fire. Shirley
pressed close to her mother, hoping to hide the fact that she, too, was
getting sleepy.

"I don't think it was a long summer," she chirped, "I would like more
summer to get herbs in; Mr. Fiddlestrings likes us to get them for him."

"You don't call him that, do you?" asked Rosemary, shocked.

"Everyone does," retorted Shirley. "Only they say 'Old Fiddlestrings'
and we don't--do we, Sarah?"

"He has a stuffed snake," said Sarah who seldom troubled herself to
answer questions that failed to directly interest her. "Rich, you said
you'd show me how to stuff a snake and you never did."

"Well, I never got around to it," Richard apologized. "I'm one who
found the summer too short."

Mr. Hildreth grunted.

"Guess you don't need a stuffed snake, Sarah," he said humorously. "A
stuffed chicken seemed to be too much for your family."

Sarah looked disgusted, while the others laughed at the recollection of
that chicken. Sarah, a few weeks before, had found a dead chicken
under the carriage house and had decided it to be a Heaven-sent
opportunity to practise her theories of taxidermy. She had stuffed the
carcass with a variety of available materials--grass and hay and
pebbles, mixed with small sticks and cakes of mud--and, her task
completed, had hidden the treasure in a cupboard in the pantry. For
some reason she deemed the sympathy of her family doubtful and she made
no mention of the experiment to anyone.

It was not long before Winnie complained of an unpleasant odor in her
always thoroughly aired pantry. She stood it for one day, grumbling.
The second day she began to talk about "country plumbing" and the third
morning she started in to scrub and scour and disinfect vigorously.
Her activities led her to the dark corner where Sarah had stowed her
chicken and the subsequent interview was brief and to the point. Sarah
buried the unfortunate fowl, using the cake turner which she was later
to bury also on command of Winnie, and this, to date, had been her sole
experience with "stuffing" anything.

Rosemary leaned forward, smiling at the fire.

"What are you thinking of, Rosemary?" asked her brother, dexterously
shifting Sarah's position so that she could not kick the fire with her
shoes--a feat she was anxious to accomplish.

"Oh, ever so many t