Cradd, both of them in deep converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle
Cradd bumbled the air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old
bass, I should have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the
devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon his
old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into exile; but
I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon the faded rose
leather of those ancestral cushions? That was not the case, for upon the
seat beside me rode the Golden Bird in a beautiful crate, which bore the
legend, "Cock, full brother to Ladye Rosecomb, the world's champion,
three-hundred-and-fourteen-egg hen, insured at one thousand dollars.
Express sixteen dollars." And in another larger crate, strapped on top of
the old haircloth trunk, which held several corduroy skirts, some coarse
linen smocks made hurriedly by Madam Felicia after a pattern in "The
Review," and several pairs of lovely, high-topped boots, as well as a
couple of Hagensack sweaters, rode his family, to whom he had not yet even
spoken. The family consisted of ten perfectly beautiful white Leghorn
feminine darlings whose crate was marked, "Thoroughbreds from Prairie Dog
Farm, Boulder, Colorado." I had obtained the money to purchase these very
much alive foundations for my fortune, also the smart farmer's costume, or
rather my idea of the correct thing in rustics, by selling all the lovely
lingerie I had brought from Paris with me just the week before the terrible
war had crashed down upon the world, and which I had not worn because I had
not needed them, to Bess Rutherford and Belle Proctor at very high prices,
because who could tell whether France would ever procure their like again?
They were composed mostly of incrustations of embroidery and real Val, and
anyway the Golden Bird only cost seven hundred dollars instead of the
thousand, and the ladies Bird only ten dollars apiece, which to me did not
seem exactly fair, as they were of just as good family as he. I was very
proud of myself for having been professional enough to follow the
directions of my new big red book on "The Industrious Fowl," and to buy