are one beauty, aren't you?" he further remarked, and I was not positively
sure whether he meant me or the Golden Bird until I saw that he had reached
down and was stroking Mr. G. Bird with a delighted hand. "Chick, chick,
chick!" he commanded, with a note that was not at all unlike the commanding
one the Sultan had used a few minutes past, only more so, and in less than
two seconds all those foolish hens were scrambling around our feet. In
fact, the command in his voice had been so forcible that I myself had moved
several feet nearer to him until I, too, was in the center of my
scrambling, clucking Bird venture.

I don't like beautiful men. I never did. I think that a woman ought to have
all the beauty there is, and I feel that a man who has any is in some way
dishonest, but I never before saw anything like that person who had come
out of the woods to the rescue of my family fortune, and I simply stared at
him as he stood with a fluff of seething white wings around his feet and
towered against the green gray of an old tree that hung over the side of
the road. He was tall and broad, but lithe and lovely like some kind of a
woods thing, and heavy hair of the same brilliant burnished red that I had
seen upon the back of a prize Rhode Island Red in the lovely water-color
plates in my chicken book,--which had tempted me to buy "red" until I had
read about the triumphs of the Leghorn "whites,"--waved close to his head,
only ruffling just over his ears enough to hide the tips of them. His eyes
were set so far back under their dark, heavy, red eyebrows that they seemed
night-blue with their long black fringe of lashes. His face was square and
strong and gentle, and the collar of his gray flannel shirt was open so
that I could see that his head was set on his wide shoulders with lines
like an old Greek masterpiece. Gray corduroy trousers were strapped around
his waist by a wide belt made of some kind of raw-looking leather that was
held together by two leather lacings, while on his feet were a kind of
sandal shoes that appeared to be made of the same leather. He must have