gaunt dog seated on the top step, greeted her
with a courteous waggle, quite as if he were the head of the
establishment and bent on doing the honors.

"He wouldn't let me come no nearer," said a lanky, grinning individual
who stood at a respectful distance, with a basket on either arm. "Looks
like he'd adopted you."

"Yes, it does rather look that way," returned Peggy, and bestowed an
appreciative pat on the dog's head. It might have been her imagination,
but she fancied that a few hours of belonging somewhere, had wrought a
marked change in him. If he had been human, she would have said that he
seemed more self-respecting. He neither cringed nor cowered, but
scrutinized Farmer Cole's hired man with an alert gravity, as if
demanding that he show his credentials.

"Mis' Cole sent you over this here truck," Joe explained, "and she says
she'll have Annie bring the bread, after she's through baking. Where
d'you want this hen?"

Peggy led the way to the woodshed, improving the opportunity to sound
Joe on the subject of raising chickens. And that unsophisticated youth,
who in the beginning of the interview had seemed as painfully conscious
of his hands and feet, as if these appendages were brand new, and he had
not had time to get accustomed to having them about, lost his
embarrassment in view of her evident teachableness, and fairly swamped
her with information.

The eighteen eggs for the setting were in a little basket by themselves.
Peggy hung over them breathlessly, and saw in fancy eighteen balls of
yellow down, teetering on toothpick legs. Then her imagination leaped
ahead, and the cream-colored eggs had become eighteen lusty,
pin-feathered fowls, worth forty cents a pound in city markets. Peggy's
heart gave a jubilant flutter. Many a fortune had started, she was sure,
with less than that basket of eggs.

The work dragged in Dolittle Cottage that morning. It was not that there
was so much to do, but there were so many distractions. Peggy's business
enterprise had been the occasion of much animated comment at the
breakfast table, and when Peggy mixed some corn meal and carried it out
to the woodshed, the girls dropped their various tasks and came flocking
after her. The yellow hen was already on her eggs, and she ruffled her
feathers in a hostile fashion at the approach of her new owner. Peggy
placed her offering conveniently near the nest, raised a warning finger
to the chattering girls, as if there had been a