" she said.

"Oh, you remember it all right. It's just the same it always was," said
the woman practically. "Now I'll stir up some meal and we'll go feed the
chicks. I've got ten of 'em--little ones." She mixed the yellow meal
and stirred it briskly, and took down her sun-bonnet--and looked at the
child dubiously. "You haven't any hat," she said.

The child's hand lifted to the rough cropped hair. "I did have a
hat--with red cherries on it," she suggested.

The woman turned away brusquely. "That's gone--with your other
things--I'll have to tie a handkerchief on you."

She brought a big, coloured kerchief--red with blue spots on it--and
bound it over the rough hair--and stood back and looked at it, and
reached out her hand. "It won't do," she said thoughtfully. The small
face, outlined in the smooth folds, had looked suddenly and strangely
refined. The woman took off the handkerchief and roughened the hair with
careful hand.

The child waited patiently. "I don't need a hat, do I?" she said
politely.

The woman looked at her again and took up the dish of meal. "You're all
right," she said, "we shan't stay long."

"I should _like_ to stay a long, _long_ time!" said Betty.

The woman smiled. "You're going out every day, you know."

"Yes." The child skipped a little in the clumsy shoes, and they passed
into the sunshine.

The woman looked about her with practical eyes. In the long rows of the
garden the men were at work. But up and down the dusty road--across the
plain--no one was in sight, and she stepped briskly toward an open shed,
rapping the spoon a little against the side of the basin she carried,
and clucking gently.

The child beside her moved slowly--looking up at the sky, as if half
afraid. She seemed to move with alien feet under the sky. Then a handful
of yellow, downy balls darted from the shed, skittering toward them,
and she fell to her knees, reaching out her hands to them and crooning
softly. "The dear things!" she said swiftly.

The woman smiled, and moved toward the shed, tapping on the side of her
pan--and the yellow brood wheeled with the sound, on twinkling legs and
swift, stubby wings.

The child's eyes devoured them. "They belong to you, don't they?" she
cried softly. "They're your _own_--your very own chickens!" Her laugh
crept over them and her eyes glowed. "See the little one, Mrs.
Seabury! Just _see_ him run!" She had dropped to her knees
again--breathless--beside the board where