Nothing loath, I lifted out sufficient for our needs, and as Dan set to cleaning the fish, I collected corn cobs and kindled a tiny fire beneath the rack. A short, roly-poly woman bustled out of the back door of the small but comfortable farmhouse and approached us. “Dear me, dear me, a lady tramp!” she exclaimed. “Bless us, if they haven’t gone to running in pairs like animals entering the ark.” Catching sight of the tandem still loaded with part of our equipment, she paused in amazement, pushing back her red calico sunbonnet and revealing wonderful masses of snow-white curls. “But you’re not a tramp after all, are you? Tramps don’t ride bicycles. What a disappointment! I’ve always wanted to meet a lady tramp. But what are you up to anyway? Must be something interesting. You look interesting.” I assured her that we were, indeed, up to something interesting, just how interesting we would probably fully realise later on. “So you’re really going back to that strange California where it is always summer? What awful monotony. Come fall, I’m always glad, for I feel that summer has been here plenty long enough.” She seated herself on the wagon tongue. The barnyard world was settling for the night with much cackling, grunting, lowing and stamping. Under a near-by shed a flock of fowls was clucking and fussing as they sought the highest perches. “Look at those chickens, now. Aren’t they just like humans?” demanded our visitor. “I sit out here and watch them by the hour.” “Caw, caw-rr,” croaked a haughty grenadier of a hen, taking a sharp peck at a handsome young pullet who had endeavoured to perch on the topmost roost. “Hear what she says? I’ll tell you,” the little woman interpreted eagerly. “‘Get right away from here, you impudent, upstart dominick. Go back with the lower clawsses where you belong and don’t try to crowd in here with your betters.’ “Do you know, we got a woman living on the other side of town who’s the perfect spit and image of that old hen. There, hear her talking? “‘These nobodies try to push in everywhere.’ “Now the old rooster is a cuttering.... ‘She seems rather a nice little thing, but of course, as you say, she’ll never be able to attain to any position in life, but really for one of her social standing, she’s quite chick.’ “Now the old hen’s talking again. ‘Fowls of quality can’t be too careful nowadays. These plebeian climbers are everywhere.’” The haughty Plymouth Rock settled herself and preened her feathers with the conscious air of duty well performed, while the little woman laughed gaily. “Now she feels that she has maintained all the traditions of her class. Oh, yes, they have classes in the chicken yard just as in the American nation. I was thinking of getting a good likeness of that hen and sending it to the _Chicago American_ so’s they could print her picture on the society page.