"An’ on the way I’ll show you my new hen-house," promised Martha. "One o’ the things I’m learnin’ to be, is a chicken-raiser. I’m learnin’ hard, an’, you might say, the chicks is learnin’ harder. But it’ll all come out right in the end, if both parties hang on, an’ keep a stiff upper lip. The first time a brood died on me, I ’most fretted myself sick. But now I learned not to hitch my heart to no hen. I do the best I can by ’em, an’ leave the rest to proverdence, an’ the inkerbater. Only, you can take it from me, them inkerbaters may be a improvement on the old way, but they certaintly is death to the mother-instinc’ in hens. Hens is like women. The less they have to do, the less they do, especially if they keep well. The minute you begin turnin’ your offsprings over to other parties, to be brought up, that’s the time your sect is goin’ to run down. An’ the chicks don’t grow up with no more feelin’ o’ reverence for their elders, an’ them that bore’m, then the childern we’re raisin’ nowadays. It’s all wrong, these modren contrivances is. We think we’re smart, shovin’ our ways in, ahead o’ nature’s, but just you wait, an’ see what comes o’ this generation o’ kids, give’m time to grow up to be men, an’ women, an’ so forth. You can take it from me, George Washin’ton an’ Abraham Linco’n wasn’t brought up in cotton-wool, so that every time somebody crossed’m, an’ they got red in the face with temper, there’d be a trained nurse to pop a the’mometer under their tongues, to see if they had a ’temperachure.’ What kep’ their childish fevers down was a good fannin’ with mother’s slipper, an’ they grew up to tell the truth an’ fear the devil, along with the other grown-up members of the fam’ly. But, these days, everything’s for the kids, an’ they know it. Believe me, my heart bleeds for my grandchildern. An’, talkin’ o’ grandchildern, here’s the model henhouse o’ New England. Internal decoratin’ done by Mr. Sammy Slawson’s son, junior." Martha held her little party back long enough to relate the tale of Sammy and the whitewashing. "An’ I told’m," she concluded, "he could walk his little self back, with his little pail o’ whitewash, an’ his little brush, an’ get busy an’ _keep_ busy, till every last thing in the place got a good coat. I told’m, ’Don’t you leave a thing go free, young man!’ so I guess we’ll see a thora job _this_ time, or I’m mistaken." A spotless interior, gleaming, white, proved her surmise correct. Sammy had evidently made "a thora job" of it this time. Claire would have been satisfied with a brief glance, but her husband detained her. "I say, Martha," he addressed Mrs. Slawson, "what is it you told young Sam? ’Not to let a thing go free’?" "Yes, sir." "Well, he’s a model boy. He has obeyed you to the letter. Look here!" Martha, looking in the direction indicated, saw a bunch of animate white, huddled disconsolately against a far corner of the white wall. "What is it?" she asked.