bought twenty hens and two nice brotherly roosters, and they had almost
caught up with me in the number of their brown babies on the whole shells.
Matthew had been coming out night and morning ever since he had brought
out his and the Beesleys' poultry and had either had supper with us at
Elmnest or we had both got riz biscuits and peach preserves and chicken
fried with Aunt Mary and Uncle Silas and Polly and Bud. I had subjugated
Rufus into cooking a few canned things, for which I had traded one of his
pig jaws at the bank-post-office-grocery emporium, and Uncle Silas had
thrown in a few potatoes, and Adam had brought me a great bag of white
beans from across Paradise Ridge, so the diet at Elmnest had changed
slightly. The absorbed twins had never noticed it at all; only they
displayed more hearty vigor in attacking the problems of literature and
history that absorbed them. Also almost every day Pan brought me young
green things that were sprouting in the woods, and I cooked them for him in
an old iron pot down by the spring-house and had supper with him.

"Those two dears are the most precious old Rips I ever beheld," said Bess
when we had retired to my room after supper on the fateful night of our
near tragedy. "You are so fortunate, Ann, to have two delicious fathers in
name only. Mine pokes into my business at all angles and insists on so much
attention from me that I don't know how I'll amount to anything in this
world. He says it takes a very fine and brainy woman to earn about ten
thousand dollars a year being affectionate and agreeable to her own father,
and that I get so much because there is no possible competition as I am an
only child, but all the same it looks like unearned money to me. Just wait
until those six little chickens begin to earn me a hundred dollars a month
like my book guarantees they will do in their second year; then I'm going
to show dad just how much I love him for himself and give him back my
bank-book."