"I need not remind you that the different breeds should be housed separately, but you who always had a gift for carpentry can easily arrange this. Indeed it was only yesterday that in opening a chest of drawers I came across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria vine on Grandma Bartram's porch! I wished to punish you, but she said--'No, Susanna, rather preserve the tool as a memento of his industry and patience.'
"I wish that I could be near to witness your natural surprise on receiving this token of our approval, but I must trust Mary to write us of it.
With something between a groan and a laugh Bart dropped this letter into my lap, with the others.
"So, after a successful struggle all these five years of our country life against the fatal magnetism of _Hens_ that has run epidemic up and down the population of commuting householders, bringing financial prostration to some and the purely nervous article to others; after avoiding 'The Wars of the Chickens, or Who scratched up those Early Peas,'--events as celebrated in local history as the Revolution or War of the Rebellion,--we are to be forced into the chicken business for the good of Bart's health and pocket, and my mental discipline, and also that a thrifty Pennsylvania air may be thrown about our altogether too delightful and altruistic summer arrangements! It's t-o-o bad!" I wailed.
Of course I know, Mrs. Evan, that I was in a temper, and that my "in-laws" mean well, but since comfortable setting hens have gone out of fashion, and incubators and brooders taken their place, there is no more pleasure or sentiment about raising poultry than in manufacturing any other article by rule. It's a business, and a very pernickety one to boot, and it's to keep Bart away from business that we are striving. Besides, that chicken book tells how many square feet per hen must be allowed for the exercising yards, and how the pens for the little chicks must be built on wheels and moved daily to fresh pasture. All the vegetable garden and flower beds and the bit of side lawn which I want for mother's rose garden would not be too much! But I seem to be leaving the track again.