"But not the kind I'm going to raise, nor put up as I'm going to put it up, and we'll be raising most of our own living besides. You can write when you feel like it, and be helping me when you don't feel like it, and before we know it, we'll be rich. Oh, Harlan, I feel like Eve all alone in the Garden with Adam!" The prospect fired his imagination, for, in common with most men, a chicken-ranch had appealed strongly to Harlan ever since he could remember. "Well," he began, slowly, in the tone which was always a signal of surrender. "Won't it be lovely," she cried ecstatically, "to have our own bossy cow mooing in the barn, and our own chickens for Sunday dinner, and our own milk, and butter, and cream? And I'll drive the vegetable waggon and you can take the things in----" "I guess not," interrupted Harlan, firmly. "If you're going to do that sort of thing, you'll have people to do the work when I can't help you. The idea of my wife driving a vegetable cart!" "All right," answered Dorothy, submissively, wise enough to let small points settle themselves and have her own way in things that really mattered. "I've not forgotten that I promised to obey you." A gratified smile spread over Harlan's smooth, boyish face, and, half-fearfully, she reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief which she had hitherto carefully concealed. "That's not all," she smiled. "Look!" "Twenty-three dollars," he said. "Why, where did you get that?" "It was in my dresser. There was a false bottom in one of the small drawers, and I took it out and found this." "What in--" began Harlan. "It's a present to us from Uncle Ebeneezer," she cried, her eyes sparkling and her face aglow. "It's for a coop and chickens," she continued, executing an intricate dance step. "Oh, Harlan, aren't you awfully glad we came?" Seeing her pleasure he could not help being glad, but afterward, when he was alone, he began to wonder whether they had not inadvertently moved into a bank. "Might be worse places," he reflected, "for the poor and deserving to move into. Diamonds and money--what next?" V Mrs. Smithers The chickens were clucking peacefully in their corner of Uncle Ebeneezer's dooryard, and the newly acquired bossy cow mooed unhappily in her improvised stable. Harlan had christened the cow "Maud" because she insisted upon going into the garden, and though Dorothy had vigorously protested against putting Tennyson to such base uses, the name still held, out of sheer appropriateness. Harlan was engaged in that pleasant pastime known as "pottering." The instinct to drive nails, put up shelves, and to improve generally his local habitation is as firmly seated in the masculine nature as housewifely characteristics are ingrained in the feminine soul. Never before having had a home of his own, Harlan was enjoying it to the full.