“You know, Ann, I told you about that wonderful Evan Baldwin who has been in Hayesville two or three times this winter, the man to whom the governor gave the portfolio of agriculture, I believe they call it.  Well, he was at the Old Hickory ball the other night when you wouldn’t come, and I told him all about you and about buying those little chickens from you, and he was so wonderful and sympathetic that Owen Murray sulked dreadfully.  He encouraged me entirely and told me a lot of things about some of his experiment stations in all the different States.  You thought you were going to stagger me with that twenty-dollar price on those chicks in shell, but he said he had paid as much as five hundred dollars apiece for a few eggs he got from some prize chickens in England and had brought them over in a basket in his own hand.  He said he thought from what I told him about the Golden Bird that twenty would be about right for one of his sons or daughters.  Ann, he is a perfectly delicious man, and you must meet him.  It is awful the way all the girls and women just follow him in droves, though I’m sure he doesn’t seem to notice us.”

“I never want to lay eyes on him, Bess.  He has insulted me and I never—­” but just here a thought struck me in my solar plexus and crinkled me entirely up.  “Oh, Bess, I forgot to fill the lamp in the incubator to-night, and I believe the chicken eggs will be all chilled to death.  What will I do?  It is near midnight and it’s—­it’s—­c—­cold.”

“Let’s get ’em quick and maybe we can resuscitate ’em.  Don’t you remember about reviving frozen people in that first-aid class we had just after the war broke out and we didn’t know whether we were in it or not?  Come on, quick!” Bess seized the quilt from the bed and descended into the back yard, clad only in her lingerie for sleeping, a silk robe-de-chambre and satin mules, while I followed, likewise garmented.

“Oh, dear, how cold,” wailed Bess as the frosty Spring air poured around us in our flight to the barn.

“Put the quilt around you,” I chattered.

“I’m going to put all the egg chickens in it,” she answered as we scuttled into the barn out of the wind.

“The lamp is out, but the eggs still feel warm to the hand,” I said as I knelt in deep contrition beside the metal hen.

“Fill it and light it, and they’ll soon warm up,” advised Bess.

“There’s no oil on the place.  I forgot it,” I again wailed.

“Isn’t there room under the hen here?” asked Bess, with the brilliant mind she inherited from Mr. Rutherford running over the speed limit, and as she spoke she felt under the old Red Ally, who only clucked good naturedly.

“It feels like she is covering a hundred now, and there’s no room for more,” said Bess, answering herself with almost a wail in her voice.  “What will we do?  The book says April-hatched chickens are the best, and these would have come out in just a few days.”