on why Pan and I both chose to wear
Roycroft clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Spain are in love after eight children," I
remarked to myself happily. "I am in agony in any shoes Pan doesn't make. I
wonder if any woman ever before was as much in love with a man about whom
she knew so little--and so much as I do about Adam."
"I don't want to know about him--I want to love him," I answered myself as
I walked up the long elm avenue. Afterwards I recalled those words to
myself, and they were bitter instead of sweet.
CHAPTER X
Friday, the twenty-first of April, I shall always remember as the busiest
day of my life, for, as Aunt Mary had said, it takes time to bank fires
enough to keep a farm alive a whole half day even if it is not running. I
did all my usual work with my small folk, and then I measured and poured
out in different receptacles their existence for the last half of the next
day. After breakfast on Saturday I finally decided upon Uncle Cradd as the
most trustworthy person of the three ancients, one of whom I was obliged to
depend upon for substitution. Rufus, I felt sure, would compromise by
feeding every ration to the hogs, and I knew that he could persuade father
to do likewise, but Uncle Cradd, I felt, would bring moral force to bear
upon the situation.
"Now, Uncle Cradd, here are all the different feeds in different buckets,
each plainly marked with the time to give it. Please, oh, please, don't let
father lead you off into Egypt or China and forget them," I said as I led
him to the barn and showed him the mobilization of buckets that I had shut
up in one of the empty bins.
"Why not just empty it all out on the ground in front of the barn, Nancy,
my dear, and let them all feed together in friendly fashion. I am afraid
you take these pretty whims of yours too seriously," he said as he beamed
affectionately at me over his large glasses.
"Because Peckerwood Pup would eat up the Leghorn babies, and it would be
extermination to some and survival to the most unfit," I answered in
despair. "Oh, won't you please do it by the directions?"
"I will, my child, I will," answered Uncle Cradd, as he saw that I was
about to become tearful. "I will come and sit right here in the barn with
my book."
"Oh, if you only will, Uncle Cradd, they will remind you when they are
hungry. Mr. G. Bird will come and peck at you when it is time to feed his
family, and the lambs and Mrs. Ewe will lick you, and Peckerwood Pup will
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