rary
work. I always absolutely hate it when Godfrey is the interrupter. But
I found myself quite pleased when Bob Power said that we ought not to
sit indoors on so fine a day. Marion ran off to get her hat and joined
us on the lawn. Bob Power led us straight to the garden, and when we
got there, made for the strawberry bed. He owned to a pleasant
recollection of the feast he had enjoyed the day before.

There is a good deal of the school-boy about Bob Power, and Marion is
quite young enough to enjoy gorging herself with ripe strawberries. I,
alas! am nearly sixty years of age. A very small number of
strawberries satisfies me, and I find that stooping to gather them
from beneath their nets tires me after a short time. Bob Power and
Marion wandered far into the remoter parts of my strawberry bed. I
stayed near the pathway. Their voices reached me and their laughter;
but I could not hear what they were saying to each other. I felt
suddenly lonely. They were getting on very well without me. I went on
by myself and inspected my melon frames. I left them after a while and
took a look at my poultry yard.

The rearing of poultry is one of the things which I do in order to
benefit my country. Quite ordinary chickens satisfy my personal
needs, and the egg of the modest barndoor fowl is all I ask at
breakfast-time. But an energetic young lady in a short tweed skirt and
thick brown boots explained to me two years ago that Ireland would be
a much happier country if everybody in it kept fowls with long
pedigrees. She must have been right about this, because the government
paid her a small salary to go round the country saying it; and no
government, not even ours, would pay people to say what is not true.
Her plan for introducing the superior hens into the homes of the
people was that I should undertake the care of such birds as she sent
me, and give their eggs, under certain conditions, to any one who
asked for them. This I agreed to do, and my new fowl yard, arranged
exactly as the young lady in thick boots wished, is my latest effort
in patriotism.

The hens which inhabited it were very fine-looking birds, and the cock
who dominated them was a credit to any government. I watched them with
real pleasure for some time. Then it occurred to me as curious that a
government which recognized the value of good blood in birds, bulls,
boars, horses, and even bees--if bees have blood--should be not only
indifferent but actually hostile to