“I wonder if I can hold my Elmnest steady on the limb when—­” I was saying to myself unsteadily, with a mist in my eyes for the small wrecked home, when from somewhere over my left shoulder there came Pan’s reedy call, and it ended with the two Delilah notes that I had thought I heard in the early morning.  It was with no will of my own that I answered with that coo which I had heard Mr. G. Bird singing on the stage of the Metropolitan in my dawn dream.  Also I crashed rapidly through the bushes in the direction of the call that this time came imperatively and without the coo.

“To your left and then straight toward the oak-tree,” came human words from Pan in quick command and direction.  “Hurry!”

With a last struggle with the briars I broke out into a small open space under the spreading branches of the old oak and upon a scene of tragedy, that is, it was almost tragedy, for the poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while Adam stood over her with something in his arms.

“It’s the fine Southdown ewe I persuaded Rufus to trade for one of the precious hogs,” he said, with not so much as a word of greeting or interest personal to me in his voice or glance, but with such wonderful tenderness that I came close to him because I couldn’t resist it.  “She dropped twin lambs last night and she is down with exhaustion.  They are getting cold, and I want to take her right up to the barn where I can bed her on hay and get something hot into all three.  Can you cuddle the lambs and carry them while I shoulder her?” As he spoke he held out his armful to me without wounding me by waiting for my consent.

“Oh, the poor, cold babies!” I exclaimed, as I lifted the skirt of my long, fashionable, heavy linen smock and wrapped them in it and my arms, close against my warm solar plexus, which glowed at their soft huddling.  One tiny thing reached out a little red tongue and feebly licked my bare wrist, and I returned the caress of introduction with a kiss on its little snowy, woolly head.

“You’ve the lovesome hand with the beasties,” said Pan as he smiled down on the lambs and me.

[Illustration:  A poor old sheep was lying flat with pathetic inertia while Adam stood over her with something in his arms]

“I like ’em because they make me sorter grow inside some place, I don’t know exactly where,” I answered as I adjusted my woolly burden for what I knew would seem a long march.  “I’ll get ’em to the barn all right,” I assured their first friend, who was now bending over the poor mother.  “This is what I took Russian ballet dancing and played golf for, only I didn’t know it.”

“You’d have executed more Baskt twists and done more holes a day if you had known,” said Adam, with beautiful unbounded faith in me, as he braced his legs far apart and lifted the limp mother sheep up across his back and shoulder.  It seemed positively weird to be standing there acting a scene out of Genesis and mentioning Baskt, and I was about to say so when Pan started on ahead through the bushes and commanded me briefly to:  “Come on!”