"It's all right, old chaps," I assured them. "Blessed is he whose wants are few and easily satisfied," as I threw them each a forkful of hay. They made a great attack upon it, tossing it with their noses and their horns in an atavistic appreciation of the good old days when their ancestors roamed the range and were never tied by the neck to a manger and left to starve while their masters married. Our cow was at present enjoying her annual holidays, so there was no milking to be done, and my morning chores were soon finished. Our pigs--we had two pigs now--saluted me after the manner of their kind until I choked their squeals with a dole of barley chop. Not even a pig can squeal through a mouthful of dry barley chop. While I was engaged in these operations the hens ran about my feet until one happened to get tramped on. Her squawking reminded me that there might be eggs, and search discovered two, fresh laid that morning. That was a glint of sunshine through the gloom. I gathered them up and turned it over in my mind for a moment whether I should take them to Jack and Marjorie. But then that would leave Jean without. There would be noses out of joint on Twenty-two soon enough, without provoking an issue. In the interests of peace I decided to eat them myself. I resisted a desire to go to Jack's door and announce that the morning chores were done because I knew that at the bottom of that desire was a hope that I should see and speak with Jean. One may be tied to a stake but that is no reason why he should poke his feet needlessly in the fire. The stove lids were red hot and the kettle was belching forth a small geyser of steam when I got back to the shack. My search for remnants from the feast of the night before was astonishingly fruitless, until I remembered that the young Hansens had been turned loose upon the left-overs. So I cooked a mixture of oatmeal and water, which I called porridge, boiled the two fresh eggs, thawed out part of a loaf of bread, melted a piece of butter, and sat down to a meal that was hardly calculated to make me rejoice in my single blessedness. After breakfast I washed my few dishes, swept the floor, made my bed, and generally set the house in order. Even then it was only ten o 'clock, with nothing more to do until noon. At noon there would be a repetition of the routine, and then nothing to do until night. At night there would be supper and the evening chores, and nothing more to do until morning. And the next day the same, and the same, and the same.