uch lovely long lines that I
found myself pausing much too often before one of the mirrors in the big
living-room to admire them. Mrs. Tillett's utility costume was of blue
checked gingham and had no lines at all except top and bottom, with a belt
in between. Both ladies wore huge gingham aprons, and I must say that they
looked like the utility branch of the feminine species while I may have
resembled the ornamental. But they were dear neighbors, and the Tillett
baby and I had a very busy and happy day with the Golden Bird and his busy
family while the two missionaries did over every bed in Elmnest, even
invading the living-room and shaking out the cushions of the old couch in
the very face of one of the charges of Xerxes' army. I put his babykins in
a big feed-basket in a nest of hay, and the two lamb twins came and licked
him every now and then by way of welcome into my barn nursery. The fine
young sheep mother was now in blooming health, and the valuable progeny
were growing by the hours, most of which they spent at the maternal fount,
opposite each other and both small tails going like a new variety of
speedometer.

"I see mother ewe knows enough to hang around the lady of the barn and
feed-bins. Those lambkins are two pounds heavier than any born within a
week of them at Plunkett's," Pan had said not a week past, and both sheep
mother and I had beamed with gratified pride at his commendation.

[Illustration: I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins
came and welcomed him]

Then while the renovation of the four-posters went on with a happy buzz, I
busied myself in and out and about with the numberless details of care of
the Bird family. My knowledge of music earned by many long hours in the
practice of harmonics and a delighted and diligent attendance at the opera
seasons of New York, Berlin, and Paris, to say nothing of Boston and
London, had not, in my new life, in any way aided me to see that I had made
a mistake in ordering a three-hundred-egg incubator to start building a
prize flock with Mr. Golden Bird and the ten Ladies Leghorn, but in this
case Adam had guided me from off that shoal, and by telegram I had changed
the order for three fifty-egg improved metal mothers and the implements
needed in accomplishing their maternal purpose. In one of them were now
fifty beautiful white pearls that I could not refrain from visiting and
regarding through the little window in the metallic side of the m