old plank in place across a rickety box.




CHAPTER IV


It is beautiful how sometimes deserving courage is rewarded if it just goes
on deserving long enough. After about an hour's hand-to-saw bout with the
old plank I was just chewing through the last inch of the last of the four
sides of nest number two when I suddenly stopped and listened. Far away to
the front of the house I heard hot oaths being uttered by the engine in a
huge racing-machine with a powerful chug with which I was quite familiar.
While I listened, the motor in agony gave a snort as it bounded over some
kind of obstruction and in two seconds, as I stood saw in hand, with not
enough time to wipe the sweat of toil from my brow, the huge blue machine
swept around the corner of the house, brought up beside the family coach,
which was still standing in front of the barn, and Matthew flung himself
out of it and to my side.

"Holy smokers, Ann, but you look good in that get-up!" he exclaimed as he
regarded me with the delight with which a person might greet a friend or
relative whom he had long considered dead or lost. "Why, you look just as
if you had stepped right out of the 'Elite Review.' And the saw, too, makes
a good note of human interest."

"Well, it's chicken interest and not human, Matthew Berry," I said,
answering his levity with spirit. "And I'm sorry I can't be at home for
your amusement to-day, but my chickens are laying while I wait, and the