t she is yet
dizzy-headed."

Here madam put her hand to her brow in confirmation.

"I was then taken by the scruff of the neck down to the pier, and
whether I fell in the lake or not I cannot say, but I was wet!"

Here the on-lookers shouted with laughter.

"My mother was then disrespectfully helped in and we were sent
adrift."

He ended in a high-toned, pitiful whine suggestive of a dog's song on
a moonlight night, but this plaint was drowned in the roars of
laughter raised by the audience.

Madam Anderson confirmed and embellished this tale, but Steve's and
Nannie's narrative, giving the circumstances of the case, their
purchase of the place, the annoyances to which these people had
subjected them, the warning that had been sounded to keep them at
arm's length, and the continued disregard of all this, sufficed, in
the opinion of the Court, to acquit them and fix the burden of the
expenses entailed by the suit upon the Anderson shoulders.

One would have supposed that this episode would have satisfied Nannie
for awhile, but she was tireless, and must needs start out to sit hens
soon after the Andersons were laid low. Now, of all unreasoning,
stupid, obstinate, contrary beasts, a sitting hen is well qualified to
carry off the first prize. Nannie had been told that when a hen began
to puff up her feathers until she was swollen to about three times her
natural size, and make a noise that sounded as if she had tried to say
something and the word caught on a hook in her throat, she was ready
to sit. Having three feathered animals in this condition, and having
coaxed Steve into buying some Plymouth Rock eggs at the trivial sum of
three dollars a sitting, Nannie proceeded to capture the hens and put
them upon nests of her own placing, wholly ignorant of the fact that
if there is one thing above all others in which a hen must have her
say, it was in the choice of residence during this vexatious period.
From the moment that Nannie put the hens upon the eggs she led a life
of unexampled activity. No sooner would she turn her back than the
various madams would rise, and with distended feathers and gurgling
clucks dismount from the nests and begin to stalk around the yard, in
defiance of directions to the contrary. The number of times that Steve
was pushed under one side of the house in pursuit of the
escaped--lunatic, I had almost said, and told to remain there while
Nannie ran around and crawled under the other side to