onversed with them
affably as they pottered about, plumber-like, poking under the
flooring with lighted candles, rubbing their thumbs up and down musty
old pipes, and prying up planks in dark corners.

They informed us that they were union men and that they hoped we were
too. And I replied that union was certainly my ultimate purpose, at
which the young Countess smiled dreamily at vacancy.

We did not dare leave the incubators. The plumbers lingered on, hour
after hour, while we sat and watched the little silver thermometers,
and waited.

It was time for the Countess Suzanne to dress, and still the plumbers
had not finished; so I sent a messenger for her maid, to bring her
trunk to the lecture-hall, and I despatched another messenger to my
lodgings for my evening clothes and fresh linen.

There were several dressing-rooms off the stage. Here, about six
o'clock, the Countess retired with her maid, to dress, leaving me to
watch the plumbers and the thermometers.

When the Countess Suzanne returned, radiant and lovely in an evening
gown of black lace, I gave her the roses I had brought for her and
hurried off to dress in my turn, leaving her to watch the
thermometers.

I was not absent more than half an hour, but when I returned I found
the Countess anxiously conversing with the plumbers and pointing
despairingly at the thermometers, which now registered only 95 deg..

"You must keep up the temperature!" I said. "Those eggs are due to
hatch within a few hours. What's the trouble with the heat?"

The plumber did not know, but thought the connections were defective.

"But that's why we called you in!" exclaimed the Countess. "Can't you
fix things securely?"

"Oh, we'll fix things, lady," replied the plumber, condescendingly,
and he ambled away to rub his thumb up and down a pipe.

As we alone were unable to move and handle the enormous eggs, the
Countess, whose sweet character was a stranger to vindictiveness or
petty resentment, had written to the members of the ornithological
committee, revealing the marvellous fortune which had crowned her
efforts in the search for evidence to sustain her theory concerning
the ux, and inviting these gentlemen to aid her in displaying the
great eggs to the assembled congress.

This she had done the night previous. Every one of the gentlemen
invited had come post-haste to her "hotel," to view the eggs with
their own sceptical and astonished eyes; and the fair young Countess