In about two seconds I had vaulted forth from between the high posts, splashed into a funny old wooden tub bound together with brass rims, whirled my black mop into a knot, slipped into the modish boots, corduroys, and a linen smock, and was running out into the peculiar moon-dawn with the swiftness of a boy.

But I was too late!  The silver-moon sky was growing rosy over behind the barn as I peered about, and a mist was rolling away from between the trees, but not a soul in all the world was awake, and I was alone.

“Did he call me?” I asked of myself under my breath.  And the answer I got was from the Golden Bird, who sent a long, triumphant, eager “salutation to the dawn” from out the shadows of the barn.

Eagerly I flew to him, and the minute I entered the apartment of the Bird family I discovered that I had been only half dreaming about my early morning opera.  Pan had come and gone.  Upon the door was pinned a piece of torn brown wrapping-paper upon which I found these penciled words: 

Give them about two quarts of warm meal mash, into which you put some ground turnips at noon.  Better build about four nests in the dark under the bin, and be sure to disinfect them by white-washing inside and out.  Put in clean hay.  Dust all the beauties on their heads and under their wings with wood ashes in which you put a little of the powder you’ll find in a piece of this paper in the right-hand corner of the bin.  They’ll want a good feed of ground grain at three o’clock.  Get copperas from Rufus to put in their water, and I’ll let you know later what else to do.  Salutations!

    Adam

“I’m glad I got up so early if that’s the day’s program,” I gasped to myself as I leaned against the bin from which the Golden Bird had already alighted and was commanding the Ladies Leghorn to descend—­a command which they were obeying one at a time with outspread white wings that were handled with the height of awkwardness.  “But I’ll do it all if it kills me,” I added, with my head up, as I began to scatter some of the big white grains that I knew to be corn and which, by lifting lids and peering into huge slanting top boxes set against the wall, I discovered along with a lot of other small brown seed stuff that I knew must be wheat.  I was glad that I had remembered that Adam had called the room the feed-room so I had known where to look.

It was so perfectly exciting to see all those fluffy white members of my family fortune scratching and clucking about my feet that I prolonged the process of the feeding by scattering only a few grains at a time until great shafts of golden morning sun were thrusting themselves in through the dim dusk and cobweb-veiled windows.

“Morning, little Mis’!  I axes yo’ parding fer not having breakfast ’fore sun-up fer you, but they didn’t never any Craddock ladies want theirn before nine o’clock before, they didn’t,” came Rufus’s voice in solemn words of apology uttered in tones of serious reproof.  As he spoke he stood as far from the door of the feed-room as possible and eyed the scratching Bird family with the deepest disapproval.  “Feed-room ain’t no place fer chickens; they oughter make they living on bugs and worms and sich.”