said Mr. Skinner. "But as far as I
can make 'im out 'e theems to be a thtewpid o' fool."

"_I_ thought 'e seemed a bit Dotty," said the carpenter from
Hickleybrow.

"'E fanthieth 'imself about poultry," said Mr. Skinner. "O my goodneth!
You'd think nobody knew nothin' about poultry thept 'im."

"'E _looks_ like a 'en," said the carpenter from Hickleybrow; "what with
them spectacles of 'is."

Mr. Skinner came closer to the carpenter from Hickleybrow, and spoke in
a confidential manner, and one sad eye regarded the distant village, and
one was bright and wicked. "Got to be meathured every blethed day--every
blethed 'en, 'e thays. Tho as to thee they grow properly. What oh ...
eh? Every blethed 'en--every blethed day."

And Mr. Skinner put up his hand to laugh behind it in a refined and
contagious manner, and humped his shoulders very much--and only the
other eye of him failed to participate in his laughter. Then doubting if
the carpenter had quite got the point of it, he repeated in a
penetrating whisper; "_Meathured_!"

"'E's worse than our old guvnor; I'm dratted if 'e ain't," said the
carpenter from Hickleybrow.

II.

Experimental work is the most tedious thing in the world (unless it be
the reports of it in the _Philosophical Transactions_), and it seemed a
long time to Mr. Bensington before his first dream of enormous
possibilities was replaced by a crumb of realisation. He had taken the
Experimental Farm in October, and it was May before the first inklings
of success began. Herakleophorbia I. and II. and III. had to be tried,
and failed; there was trouble with the rats of the Experimental Farm,
and there was trouble with the Skinners. The only way to get Skinner to
do anything he was told to do was to dismiss him. Then he would nib his
unshaven chin--he was always unshaven most miraculously and yet never
bearded--with a flattened hand, and look at Mr. Bensington with one eye,
and over him with the other, and say, "Oo, of courthe, Thir--if you're
_theriouth_!"

But at last success dawned. And its herald was a letter in the long
slender handwriting of Mr. Skinner.

"The new Brood are out," wrote Mr. Skinner, "and don't quite like the
look of them. Growing very rank--quite unlike what the similar lot was
before your last directions was given. The last, before the cat got
them, was a very nice, stocky chick, but these are Growing like
thistles. I never saw. They peck so hard, striking above boot top, that