re able to
eat them, for an old hen is a useless and profitless possession and I
begin to understand why lordly man has appropriated that phrase as a
term of contempt for certain of my sex. I'm trading in my eggs--and
likewise my butter--at Buckhorn, selling the Number One grade and
holding back the Number Twos for home consumption. There is an amazing
quantity of Number Twos, because of "stolen nests" and the lack of
proper coops and runs. But we seem to get away with them all. Dinkie
now loves them and would eat more than one at a time if I'd let him.

The gluttony of the normal healthy three-year-old child, by the way,
is something incredible. Dinkie reminds me more and more of a robin in
cherry-time. He stuffs sometimes, until his little tummy is as tight
as a drum, and I verily believe he could eat his own weight in
chocolate blanc-mange, if I'd let him. Eating, with him, is now a
serious business, demanding no interruptions or distractions. Once
he's decently filled, however, his greediness takes the form of
exterior application. He then rejoices to plaster as much as he can in
his hair and ears and on his face, until he looks like a cross between
a hod-carrier and a Fiji-Islander. And grown men, I've concluded, are
very much the same with their appetite of love. They come to you with
a brave showing of hunger, but when you've given until no more remains
to be given, they become finicky and capricious, and lose their
interest in the homely old porridge-bowl which looked all loveliness
to them before they had made it theirs....

This afternoon, tired of scheming and conceiting for the future, I had
a longing to be frivolous and care-free. So I got out the old
rusty-rimmed banjo, tuned her up, and sat on an overturned milk-bucket,
with Dinkie and Bobs and Poppsy and Pee-Wee for an audience.

I was leaning back with my knees crossed, strumming out _Turkey in the
Straw_ when Peter walked up and sat down between Bobs and Dinkie. So I
gave him _The Whistling Coon_, while the Twins lay there positively
pop-eyed with delight, and he joined in with me on _Dixie_, singing in
a light and somewhat throaty baritone. Then we swung on to _There's a
Hole in the Bottom of the Sea_, which must always be sung to a
church-tune, and still later to that dolorous ballad, _Oh, Bury Me Not
on the Lone Prair-hee!_ Then we tried a whistling duet with banjo
accompaniment, pretty well murdering the Tinker's Song from _Robin
Hood_ until Whi