“Finely!” she answered.  “He posed splendidly.  But I couldn’t do anything with his mother.  She will require coaxing.”

“The Lord be praised!” muttered Freckles under his breath.

The Bird Woman began to feel better.

“Why do you call the baby vulture ’Little Chicken’?” she asked, leaning toward Freckles in an interested manner.

“’Twas Duncan began it,” said Freckles.  “You see, through the fierce cold of winter the birds of the swamp were almost starving.  It is mighty lonely here, and they were all the company I was having.  I got to carrying scraps and grain down to them.  Duncan was that ginerous he was giving me of his wheat and corn from his chickens’ feed, and he called the birds me swamp chickens.  Then when these big black fellows came, Mr. McLean said they were our nearest kind to some in the old world that they called ‘Pharaoh’s Chickens,’ and he called mine ‘Freckles’ Chickens.’”

“Good enough!” cried the Bird Woman, her splotched purple face lighting with interest.  “You must shoot something for them occasionally, and I’ll bring more food when I come.  If you will help me keep them until I get my series, I’ll give you a copy of each study I make, mounted in a book.”

Freckles drew a deep breath.

“I’ll be doing me very best,” he promised, and from the deeps he meant it.

“I wonder if that other egg is going to hatch?” mused the Bird Woman.  “I am afraid not.  It should have pipped today.  Isn’t it a beauty!  I never before saw either an egg or the young.  They are rare this far north.”

“So Mr. McLean said,” answered Freckles.

Before they drove away, the Bird Woman thanked him for his kindness to the Angel and to her.  She gave him her hand at parting, and Freckles joyfully realized that this was going to be another person for him to love.  He could not remember, after they had driven away, that they even had noticed his missing hand, and for the first time in his life he had forgotten it.

When the Bird Woman and the Angel were on the home road, she told of the little corner of paradise into which she had strayed and of her new name.  The Bird Woman looked at the girl and guessed its appropriateness.

“Did you know Mr. McLean had a son?” asked the Angel.  “Isn’t the little accent he has, and the way he twists a sentence, too dear?  And isn’t it too old-fashioned and funny to hear him call his father ’mister’?”

“It sounds too good to be true,” said the Bird Woman, answering the last question first.  “I am so tired of these present-day young men who patronizingly call their fathers ‘Dad,’ ‘Governor,’ ‘Old Man’ and ’Old Chap,’ that the boy’s attitude of respect and deference appealed to me as being fine as silk.  There must be something rare about that young man.”

She did not find it necessary to tell the Angel that for several years she had known the man who so proudly proclaimed himself Freckles’ father to be a bachelor and a Scotchman.  The Bird Woman had a fine way of attending strictly to her own business.