ure you'll be able to let me have the thrasher? My
wheat will begin to sprout in the shock pretty soon. Do you
reckon your father would be willing to work on Sunday, if I
helped you, to let the machine off a day earlier?"

"I'm afraid not. Mother wouldn't like it. We never have done
that, even when we were crowded."

"Well, I think I'll go over and have a talk with your mother. If
she could look inside my wheat shocks, maybe I could convince her
it's pretty near a case of your neighbour's ox falling into a pit
on the Sabbath day."

"That's a good idea. She's always reasonable."

Leonard rose. "What's the news?"

"The Germans have torpedoed an English passenger ship, the Arabic;
coming this way, too."

"That's all right," Leonard declared. "Maybe Americans will stay
at home now, and mind their own business. I don't care how they
chew each other up over there, not a bit! I'd as soon one got
wiped off the map as another."

"Your grandparents were English people, weren't they?"

"That's a long while ago. Yes, my grandmother wore a cap and
little white curls, and I tell Susie I wouldn't mind if the baby
turned out to have my grandmother's skin. She had the finest
complexion I ever saw."

As they stepped out of the back door, a troop of white chickens
with red combs ran squawking toward them. It was the hour at
which the poultry was usually fed. Leonard stopped to admire
them. "You've got a fine lot of hens. I always did like white
leghorns. Where are all your roosters?"

"We've only got one. He's shut up in the coop. The brood hens are
setting. Enid is going to try raising winter frys."

"Only one rooster? And may I ask what these hens do?"

Claude laughed. "They lay eggs, just the same,--better. It's the
fertile eggs that spoil in warm weather."

This information seemed to make Leonard angry. "I never heard of
such damned nonsense," he blustered. "I raise chickens on a
natural basis, or I don't raise 'em at all." He jumped into his
car for fear he would say more.

When he got home his wife was lifting supper, and the baby sat
near her in its buggy, playing with a rattle. Dirty and sweaty as
he was, Leonard picked up the clean baby and began to kiss it and
smell it, rubbing his stubbly chin in the soft creases of its
neck. The little girl was beside herself with delight.

"Go and wash up for supper, Len," Susie called from the stove. He
put down the baby and began splashing in the tin basin, talking
wit