“Yes, and I’ve got to get these nests done right away so as to be ready to catch the rest of them,” I said and began to saw furiously, as if I were constructing a bucket to catch a deluge.

“Say, gimme the saw, Ann, and you get the fodder and things to put in the bottom of them to keep them from smashing as they come,” said Matthew, as he flung off his coat, jammed his motor-cap on the back of his head, and took the saw from my unresisting hand.

“I’ll get the whitewash and whiten them as you finish them,” I said, as I hurriedly consulted the torn piece of wrapping-paper I took from one of the huge pockets of my smock.

“All right, but you had better hump yourself, for I believe I’m going to be some carpenter.  This saw has a kind of affinity feeling to my hand,” said Matthew, as he put his foot on one end of the plank and began to make the saw fly through the wood like a silver knife through fluffy cake.  If saws were the only witnesses, the superiority of men over women would be established in very short order.  “And say, Ann, I wish you would be thinking what you are going to charge for a half interest in this business.  Law and real estate look slow to me after these returns right before my eyes,” he added, as he stopped to move the pearl treasures farther out of the way of a possible flying plank.

“I’m going to give you one of them to take home with you, Matt,” I answered, with a most generous return of his appreciation of these foundation pebbles of my family fortune.  Then I went to appeal to Rufus for the whitewash.

“They’s a half barrel uf lime and a bucket and bresh in the corner uf the barn what Mas’ Adams made me git, he did; but it’s fer the hawgs and can’t be wasted on no chickens,” he said, answering my very courteous request with a great lack of graciousness.

“The chickens will pay it back to the hogs, Rufus,” I answered airily as I ran back to the barn, eager for the fray.

And a gorgeous fray it was, with Matthew whistling and directing and pounding and having the time of his very frivolous life.

Now, of course, nobody in these advanced times thinks that it is not absolutely possible, even easy, for a woman to live any kind of constructive life she chooses entirely without assistance from a man, but she’ll get to the place she has started for just about a year after she would have arrived if a man had happened along to do the sawing.  The way my friend Matthew Berry cut and hammered off one by one the directions on that piece of paper in my smock pocket would have proved the proposition above stated to any doubtful woman.  And while Matthew and I had had many happy times together at balls and parties and dinners and long flights in our cars and at the theatre and opera, also in dim corners in gorgeous clothes, I am sure we had never been so happy as we were that morning while we labored together in the interest of Mr. G. Bird and family.  We went beyond