ly
arrange this. Indeed it was only yesterday that in opening a chest of
drawers I came across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which
you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria vine on
Grandma Bartram's porch! I wished to punish you, but she said--'No,
Susanna, rather preserve the tool as a memento of his industry and
patience.'

"I wish that I could be near to witness your natural surprise on
receiving this token of our approval, but I must trust Mary to write us
of it.

"Your mother,
"SUSAN BARTRAM PENROSE."

With something between a groan and a laugh Bart dropped this letter into
my lap, with the others.

"So, after a successful struggle all these five years of our country
life against the fatal magnetism of _Hens_ that has run epidemic up and
down the population of commuting householders, bringing financial
prostration to some and the purely nervous article to others; after
avoiding 'The Wars of the Chickens, or Who scratched up those Early
Peas,'--events as celebrated in local history as the Revolution or War
of the Rebellion,--we are to be forced into the chicken business for the
good of Bart's health and pocket, and my mental discipline, and also
that a thrifty Pennsylvania air may be thrown about our altogether too
delightful and altruistic summer arrangements! It's t-o-o bad!" I
wailed.

Of course I know, Mrs. Evan, that I was in a temper, and that my
"in-laws" mean well, but since comfortable setting hens have gone out of
fashion, and incubators and brooders taken their place, there is no more
pleasure or sentiment about raising poultry than in manufacturing any
other article by rule. It's a business, and a very pernickety one to
boot, and it's to keep Bart away from business that we are striving.
Besides, that chicken book tells how many square feet per hen must be
allowed for the exercising yards, and how the pens for the little chicks
must be built on wheels and moved daily to fresh pasture. All the
vegetable garden and flower beds and the bit of side lawn which I want
for mother's rose garden would not be too much! But I seem to be leaving
the track again.

Bart didn't say a word, except that "At any rate we must bring the fowls
up from the station," and as the stable door was locked and the key in
Barney's pocket, Bart and _The Man_ started to walk down to the village
to look him up in some of his haunts, or failing in this to get t