“They’re omens of good luck, bless the Lord, Honeybunch.  Pick ’em right up!” exclaimed Mrs. Silas.

“Oh, they are warm!” I cried as I picked the two treasures up with reverent hands and cuddled them against the linen of the smock over my breast in which my heart was beating high with excitement.  And as I held them there all threat of life vanished never to return, no matter through what vicissitudes the Golden Bird family and I were to pass.

“You can eat these, and next week you can begin to save for a setting as soon as you can get a hen ready.  I’ll lend you the first one of mine that broods,” said Mrs. Silas as she took both the beautiful treasures into one of her large hands with what I thought was criminal carelessness, but didn’t like to say so.

“I’ve ordered a three-hundred-egg incubator for them,” I said proudly, as I gently took the warm treasures back into my hand.  “Incubators are so much more sanitary and intelligent than hens,” I added with all the surety of the advertisement for the mechanical hen which I had answered with thirty-five dollars obtained from the sale of the last fluffy petticoat I had hoped to retain, but which I gave up gladly after reading the advertisement.  Two most lovely chemises had gone for the two brooders that were to accompany the incubator, and it seemed hard to think that I would have to wait ten days to receive the fruits of my feminine sacrifice from the slow shipping service of the railroad.

“Don’t ever say that again, Nancy!  Hens have more genuine wisdom growing at the roots of their pin feathers than most women display during the span of their entire lives, and they make very much better mothers,” reproved Aunt Mary, with sweet firmness.  “Just you wait and see which brings out your prize birds, the wooden box or the hen.  When men invent something with a mother’s heart, they had better name it angel and admit that the kingdom has come.  Bless my soul; these biscuits I brought over for you-all’s breakfast are stone-cold!”

“I’ve had my breakfast a half a day ago,” I answered.  “You go in and start father and Uncle Cradd off with the biscuits while I finish the nest and—­and do some more things for my family fortune.”

“Child, if you attempt to do the things that Adam wants you to do for and with live stock you may see miracles being hatched out and born, but you’ll be too worn out to notice ’em.  Trap nests indeed!  I’ve got to have some time to make my water waves and offer daily prayer!” And with this ejaculation of good-natured indignation, evidently at the memory of sundry and various poultry prods, Mrs. Silas betook herself to the house with a beautiful and serene dignity.  As she went she stopped to break a sprig from a huge old lilac that was beginning to burst its brown buds and to put up half a yard of rambler that trailed across the path with its treacherous thorns.

“Your lilacs are breaking scent already,” she called back to me over her shoulder.