the
Lord sometimes hatches out two birds in far apart nests just to give
'em wing-strength to fly acrost river and hill to find each other. You
both kinder wandered foreign some 'fore you sighted one another, but
now you can begin to build your own nest right away, and I offers my
heart as a bush on Providence Nob to put it in."

CHAPTER IX

THE LITTLE HARPETH WOMAN OF MANY SORROWS

"This here are a curious spell of weather," remarked Mother Mayberry,
as she paused beside the singer lady who was holding Martin Luther up
on the broad window-sill, and with him was looking disconsolately down
the Road. "June's gone to acting like a woman with nerves that cries
just because she can. I'm glad all the chicken babies are feathered out
and can shed rain. Them little Hoosier pullets have already sprouted
tail feathers. They ain't a one of 'em a-going into the skillet no
matter how hungry Tom Mayberry looks after 'em. If I don't hold you and
Cindy back from spoiling him with chicken-fixings three times a day
he'll begin to show pin feathers hisself in no time."

"He likes chicken better than anything else," murmured Miss Wingate as
she buried a blush in Martin Luther's topknot.

"Well, wanting ain't always a reason for being gave to," said the
Doctor's mother with a chuckle as she admired the side view of the
blush. "But, seeing that he about half feeds hisself by looking at me
and you at the table, I reckon I'll have to let him have two chickens a
day to keep up his strength. Honey-fuzzle are a mighty satisfying diet,
though light, for a growed man. Reckon we can persuade him to try a
couple of slices of old ham onct in a while so as to give a few
broilers time to get legs long enough to fry?"

"We can try," answered the singer lady in a doubtful tone of voice, for
the Doctor's penchant for young chicken was very decided.

"Dearie me, it do beat all how some plans of life fall down in the
oven," said the Doctor's mother, as she eyed Miss Wingate with her most
quizzical smile quirking up the corners of her humorous mouth. "Here I
put myself to all manner of troubles to go out into the big world to
get a real managing wife for Tom Mayberry and I might just as well have
set cross-handed and waited for Susie Pike or little Bettie to grow up
to the spoiling of him. I thought seeing that you'd been raised with a
silver spoon in your mouth and handed life on a fringed napkin, so to
speak, you would make him stand around