try, and if we don't do it the right way she is never going to
compliment us with her confidence again. Help, please! I'm weighted
down by the responsibility." And as she spoke Miss Wingate's eyes
shone across Teether's bobbing head with delighted merriment.

"Well, let's try," answered the Doctor with the air of being ready
to do or dare, an attitude which a vision such as his eyes rested
upon is apt to incite in any man thus challenged. "Will you take
command? I'm many times proved incompetent on such occasions, and I
feel sure Mother trusted to your generalship." And together they
went through the garden and over into the chicken yard.

"Now," said Miss Wingate, "I think the thing to do is not to let
them know we are afraid of them. Let's just take their going under
the coops as a matter of course, and then, perhaps, they will go
without any remonstrance."

"Sort of a mental influence dodge," answered the Doctor
enthusiastically. "Let's try it on Spangles first. I somehow feel
that she will be more impressionable than Old Dominick. You
influence while I spread the millet seed in front of her coop." And
he bent down in front of the half barrel and carefully laid a
tempting evening meal, with his eye on Fuss-and-Feathers. Spangles
hesitated, stood on one foot, clucked in an affected tone of voice
to her huddling babies and coquettishly turned her head from one
side to the other as if enthusing over his artistic service before
accepting his hospitality. Then, just as she was poising one dainty
foot ready for the first step in advance, and had sounded a forward
note to the cheepers around her, Old Dominick calmly stalked
forward, stepped right across the Doctor's coaxing hand held out to