Sarah looked disgusted, while the others laughed at the recollection of that chicken. Sarah, a few weeks before, had found a dead chicken under the carriage house and had decided it to be a Heaven-sent opportunity to practise her theories of taxidermy. She had stuffed the carcass with a variety of available materials--grass and hay and pebbles, mixed with small sticks and cakes of mud--and, her task completed, had hidden the treasure in a cupboard in the pantry. For some reason she deemed the sympathy of her family doubtful and she made no mention of the experiment to anyone. It was not long before Winnie complained of an unpleasant odor in her always thoroughly aired pantry. She stood it for one day, grumbling. The second day she began to talk about "country plumbing" and the third morning she started in to scrub and scour and disinfect vigorously. Her activities led her to the dark corner where Sarah had stowed her chicken and the subsequent interview was brief and to the point. Sarah buried the unfortunate fowl, using the cake turner which she was later to bury also on command of Winnie, and this, to date, had been her sole experience with "stuffing" anything. Rosemary leaned forward, smiling at the fire. "What are you thinking of, Rosemary?" asked her brother, dexterously shifting Sarah's position so that she could not kick the fire with her shoes--a feat she was anxious to accomplish. "Oh, ever so many things," said Rosemary. "About Louisa and Alec and the circus. And the poor farm, too." Warren was watching the fire closely, too. "I drove past the poor farm the other day," he said slowly, "and the lawns have all been ploughed up and seeded. There's no place now for the folks to sit, except on the back porch. Not till the new grass has a good start." "I don't see why Sarah is always planning a farm for animals," Rosemary declared a little passionately. "If I ever have a farm it is going to be a home for people who haven't any other home. People like the Gays and old men and women who have no one to take care of them." "I'll have a poor farm, too," cried Sarah, wide awake in an instant. "I never thought of that. I'll have a place for sick animals, too, but I'll have a real poor farm for old horses and cows and pigs and things--when they're too old to work, like old Belle." Warren and Richard laughed and Doctor Hugh patted his small sister's energetic dark head. "I wish you and Rosemary could do all you plan," he said with a half sigh. "There's room enough for that help and more." Mrs. Hildreth, her busy hands for once idle, stared at the blazing fire. She had told her husband earlier in the day that she hardly knew how to behave at a picnic, it had been so long since she had allowed herself such a frivolous pleasure. She sat now, between Winnie and Mrs. Willis, tense and upright, unable to relax, but resting nevertheless.