father and Uncle Cradd off with the biscuits while I finish the nest
and--and do some more things for my family fortune."

"Child, if you attempt to do the things that Adam wants you to do for and
with live stock you may see miracles being hatched out and born, but you'll
be too worn out to notice 'em. Trap nests indeed! I've got to have some
time to make my water waves and offer daily prayer!" And with this
ejaculation of good-natured indignation, evidently at the memory of sundry
and various poultry prods, Mrs. Silas betook herself to the house with a
beautiful and serene dignity. As she went she stopped to break a sprig from
a huge old lilac that was beginning to burst its brown buds and to put up
half a yard of rambler that trailed across the path with its treacherous
thorns.

"Your lilacs are breaking scent already," she called back to me over her
shoulder.

A woman can experience no greater sensation of joy than that which she
feels when she first realizes that she is the mistress of a lilac bush.
Neither her début dance nor her first proposal of sentiment equals it. It
is the same way about the first egg she gathers with her own hands; the
sensation is indescribable.

"I'll do all the things he says do for you and the family, Mr. G. Bird, if
it kills me, as it probably will," I said with resolution as I drove a
last wobbly nail into the first nest, and took up the saw to again attack
the odds and ends of old plank I had collected on the barn floor. "If I can
make one nest in two hours, I can make two more in four more, and then I
will have time for the rest of the things," I assured myself as I again
looked at my wrist-watch, and began to saw with my knee holding the tough