"I'm glad to meet you, sir, and I am grateful for your assistance in
capturing my daughter's whims," said father, as he came partly out of his
B.C. daze.

As he took my hand into his slender, but very powerful grasp, that man had
the impertinence to laugh into my eyes at my parent's double-entendre,
which he had intended as a simple single remark.

"No, thank you, sir; I've got to get across Paradise Ridge before sundown.
The lambs are dropping fast over at Plunkett's, and I want to make sure
those Southdown ewes are all right," he answered as he put my hand out of
his, though I almost let it rebel and cling, and took for a second the
Golden Bird's proud head into his palm.

"I'll be over at Elmnest before your--your 'good judgment' needs mine," he
said to me as softly as I think a mother must speak to a child as she
unloosens clinging dependent fingers. As he spoke he shut the door of the
old ark, and Uncle Cradd drove on, leaving him standing on the edge of the
great woods looking after us.

"Oh, I wish that man were going home with us, Mr. G. Bird, or we were going
home with him," I said with a kind of terror of the unknown creeping over
me. As I spoke I reached out and cuddled the Golden darling into the hollow
of my arm. Some day I am going to travel to the East shore of Baltimore to
the Rosecomb Poultry Farm to see the woman who raised the Golden Bird and
cultivated such a beautiful confiding, and affectionate nature in him. He
soothed me with a chuckle as he pecked playfully at my fingers and then
called cheerfully down to the tethered white Ladies of Leghorn.