larger crate, strapped on top of
the old haircloth trunk, which held several corduroy skirts, some coarse
linen smocks made hurriedly by Madam Felicia after a pattern in "The
Review," and several pairs of lovely, high-topped boots, as well as a
couple of Hagensack sweaters, rode his family, to whom he had not yet even
spoken. The family consisted of ten perfectly beautiful white Leghorn
feminine darlings whose crate was marked, "Thoroughbreds from Prairie Dog
Farm, Boulder, Colorado." I had obtained the money to purchase these very
much alive foundations for my fortune, also the smart farmer's costume, or
rather my idea of the correct thing in rustics, by selling all the lovely
lingerie I had brought from Paris with me just the week before the terrible
war had crashed down upon the world, and which I had not worn because I had
not needed them, to Bess Rutherford and Belle Proctor at very high prices,
because who could tell whether France would ever procure their like again?
They were composed mostly of incrustations of embroidery and real Val, and
anyway the Golden Bird only cost seven hundred dollars instead of the
thousand, and the ladies Bird only ten dollars apiece, which to me did not
seem exactly fair, as they were of just as good family as he. I was very
proud of myself for having been professional enough to follow the
directions of my new big red book on "The Industrious Fowl," and to buy
Golden Bird and his family from localities which were separated as far as
is the East from the West. My company was responsible for my
light-heartedness at a time when I should have been weeping with vain
regrets at leaving life--and perhaps love, for I couldn't help hearing in
my mind's ears that great dangerous racer bearing Matthew away from me at
the rate of eighty miles an hour. I was figuring on just how long it would
take the five to eight hundred children of the Bird family, which I
expected to incarnate themselves out of egg-shells, to increase to a flock
of two thousand, from which, I was assured by the statistics in that very
reliable book, I ought to make three thousand dollars a year, maybe five,
with "good management." Also I was not at all worried about the "good
management" to be employed. I intended to begin to exert it the minute of
my arrival in the township of Riverfield. I had even already begun to use
"thoughtful care," for I had brought a box of tea biscuits along, and I
felt a positive thrill of affection f