"I don't know what you are talking about, but I understand you," I answered
him hotly. "Also I know that I love that old sheep more than you do, and
I'm going to get in line with my egg-basket when the United States begins
mustering in forces to fight, no matter what it is to be. I wish I could
say it like I feel it to that Mr. Secretary Evan Baldwin, who forgets that
women are the natural--the nutritive sex."

"I wish you could," said kind Adam, with one of Pan's railing laughs.

"Don't laugh at me--I'm getting born all over, and it is hard," I said with
a sob in my throat.

"Forgive me! I'm not really laughing--it's just a form--form of the
Peckerwood's nature-worship," he answered as he took my hand in his warm
one for a second. "Let's go finish up with old sheep mother," he added as
he began to pad swiftly away up the path, drawing me after him.

"Yes, I _am_ growing inside," I assured myself as I for the second night
fell asleep on the soft bosom of my family tradition of four posts.

One of the most bromidic performances that human beings indulge in
anywhere from their thirty-fifth to eightieth years is to sigh, look wise,
and make this remark: "If I could only begin life over again, knowing what
I do now!"

I'm never going to be impressed by that again, and I'm going to answer
straight out from the shoulder, "Well, it would be a great strain to you if
you found yourself doing it."

That was about what my entry into life at Elmnest, Riverfield, Harpeth,