My words were lost in a prolonged howl. He had a phenomenal voice, but this delayed howl eclipsed all previous ones. I followed him in frantic haste, eager to forswear all designs on his pets, but he fled as if I were after his scalp. When I finally found him, too late, he was in his mother's arms, and I knew she had promised him everything, from the look she turned on me,--a look that caused me to slink silently away, a soulless brute, and alas!--a tailless one. "Henry," said Aunt Sophy, complacently, as I drove her to the station after her visit, "in all the time my husband had his farm I never could get him to use our own chickens. He said they cost him two dollars apiece, being from thoroughbred stock, but I see you have more sense and raise good plain barnyard fowls that you can eat every day if you want to. Why, we must have had them three times a week while I've been here, and you seem to have a good large flock yet. I've tried a dozen times to count them, but they always went criss-cross. How many have you got left?" "Just twenty-seven," I answered, stroking my mustache with modest pride. VI A COW AND A CALF I did not approve of Marion's habit of keeping accounts at Waydean. There was always a missing balance, but I never could get her to see what a needless worry and waste of time it was to try to locate it, or how much better it is to take my plan and merely count the cash on hand to settle one's financial standing. It is diverting to me to calculate future hypothetical receipts and expenditures, but it is the reverse of entertaining to look backwards at the irrevocable past, the past that is called back by various carefully entered items in Marion's account book, prominent among which looms payment of three hundred dollars for Emperor mining shares. It was one evening while I was engaged in preparing my weekly agricultural page for the _Observer_, and Marion was poring over her account book that she suddenly dropped her pencil and exclaimed: "Henry!" "Well?" I asked, with meek resignation, my brain beginning to stiffen, for I judged from her tone that she had arrived at some miraculous result in figures. "We've been living in the country four months," she said impressively, "and what do you think I find? We've actually paid more for butter and milk and vegetables than in any four months while we lived in the city." "How strange," I commented, trying to look interested. My wife smiled slightly, in a way that I find peculiarly irritating. "You're only pretending to listen," she said, "and you couldn't possibly understand while you look like that." My weariness vanished; I started up indignantly. "While I look like what?" I demanded. Marion laughed. "That's better," she said. "I'd rather see you look angry than stupid. Now I'll try again to get your attention. Do you remember what you said when I gave you the choice of a lawn-mower or a hammock for your birthday?"