for lunchers, but—­but I had in a month learned to understand what a dollar might mean to a man or woman, and at the thought of that two hundred and forty dollars Mr. G. Bird and family had earned for me in their second month of my ownership my courage arose and girded up its loins for the long road ahead.  I knew enough to know that these returns were a kind of isolated nugget in the poultry business, and yet why not?

“We’ll sell Mr. Evan Baldwin a five-hundred-dollar gold egg yet, Mr. G. Bird,” I said to myself.

After luncheon they all departed and left me to my afternoon’s work.  Matthew lingered behind the others and helped me feed the old red ally and Mrs. Ewe and Peckerwood Pup.

“I was talking to Evan Baldwin at the club after his first lecture the other night and, Ann, I believe I’ll be recruited for the plow as well as for the machine-gun.  I’m going to buy some land out there back of the Beesleys’ and raise sheep on it.  He says Harpeth is losing millions a year by not raising sheep.  I’m going to live at Riverfield a lot of the time and motor back and forth to business.  Truly, Ann, the land bug has bit me and—­and it isn’t just—­just to come up on your blind side.  But, dear, now don’t you think that it would be nice for me to live over here with you as a perfectly sympathetic agricultural husband?”

“I needed a husband so much more yesterday to help with the pruning of the rose-vines than I do to-day, Matthew,” I answered with a laugh.  Matthew’s proposals of marriage are so regular and so alike that I have to avoid monotony in the wit of my answers.

“I’m never in time to do a single thing on this place, and I don’t see how everything gets done for you without my help.  Who helps you?”

“Everybody,” I answered.  I had never had the courage to break Adam to Matthew in the long weeks I had been seeing them both every day, and of course Pan had never come out of the woods when Matthew or any of the rest were there.  “I’ll tell you what you can do for me,” I said, with a sudden inspiration about getting rid of him, for the red-headed Peckerwood had promised to come and put some kind of hoodoo earth around the peonies and irises and pinks in my garden, also to bud some kind of a new rose on one of the old blush ones, and I wanted the place quiet so he would venture out of his lair.  “You can go on to town and look after Polly carefully.  She is going in with Bess for the first time since their infatuation, and I want her eyes to open gradually on the world out over Paradise Ridge.”

“Ann, ought they ever to open?” asked Matthew, suddenly, with the color coming up to the roots of his hair and burning in his ears like it still does in Bud Corn-tassel’s when he comes over to see or help me or to bring me something from Aunt Mary, his mother.  “Bess is one of the best of friends I’ve got in the world, but I just—­just couldn’t see Corn-tassel dancing in some man’s arms in the mere hint of an evening gown that Bess occupied while fox-trotting with Evan Baldwin at the club the other night.”