“I’d rather eat my breakfast out of my own plate and let ladies eat they’s.  Sam has to tie up cows that eat out of other’s stalls, and the old white rooster has to be put in a coop ’cause he gobbles the hen feed; but ’cause you are company he lets you do it,” the Byrd remarked, all in one breath between two pieces of his pone.  At which Dr. Chubb wheezed and chuckled delightedly and Sam roared.

“Women critters ain’t ever so free with vittels as men; they have to kinder toll ’em along to nibble feed, and life, too,” remarked the doctor of distressed animals as we all rose from the table just as the sun burst in on the situation from over Paradise Ridge.

And while he and the Byrd went to again look at the invalids, and Mammy Kitty removed the dishes into a little cupboard that served as butler’s pantry and storeroom, Sam showed me the rest of his house—­which consisted of his own room, that “leaned-to” the long living-room opposite that of Mammy Kitty, and a back porch.  That little room made me feel queer and choky.  It was neat and poor; and a narrow, old mahogany bed, that had always been in the Crittenden nursery, was pushed back under the low side.  It had a shelf or two with a curtain of dark chintz under which farm clothes hung, a gun in the corner, a jolly little wood stove, and close beside Sam’s bed was the young Byrd’s cot with its little pillow my mother had made for him before he was ushered into the world on the day his mother left it.  I could almost see the big rough hand go out to comfort the little fledgling in the dark.  I choked still further, and turned hurriedly out on to the low, wide old porch that ran all the way across the back of the house and which apparently was bath-room, refrigerator, seed-rack as to its beams, and the general depositing-place of the farm; but not before I had remarked, hanging by his door, a grass basket I had woven for Sam to bring locust pods to the hollyhock family.  Then I fled, only stopping to squeeze Mammy over her dish-pan and get my hat off the cedar pegs that stuck out of the side of the old chimney to serve just such a purpose.

I found Dr. Chubb and the Byrd, who was now attired in overalls of the exact shade and cut of Sam’s, standing by Redwheels with their mouths and eyes wide open in rapture.

“Well, ’fore I die I’ve saw a horse with steel innards and rid it,” remarked the old doctor.  “Machines is jest the common sense of God Almighty made up by men, ’ste’d er animals made up by His-self.  But I must git on, missie, or some critter over at Spring Hill will have a conniption and die in it fer lack of a drench or a dose.”