"Now, of course, Ann, everybody admires your pluck about this retiring from the world and becoming a model rustic, but it does seem to me that you might admit that some of your old friends have at least a part of the attraction for you that is vested in, well, say old Mrs. Red Ally, for instance. Will you or will you not come in to dine and to wine and to dance at the country club with Matthew Saturday evening?" Bess delivered herself of the text of her mission to me before she descended from her cherry roadster in front of the barn. "Oh, Bess, just come and see old Mrs. Red and never, never ask me to feel about a mere friend of my childhood like I do about her," I answered with welcome and excitement both in my voice. "Do come quick and look!" "Coming," answered Bess, with delightful enthusiasm and no wounded pride, as she left the car in one motion and swept into the barn with me in about two more. "Now, just look at that," I said as I opened the top of the long box that is called a brooder and is supposed to supplement the functions of the metal incubator mother in the destiny of chicken young. It has feed and water-pans in it, straw upon the floor as a carpet, and behind flannel portieres is supposed to burn a lamp with mother ardor sufficient to keep the small fledglings warm, though orphaned. Did the week-old babies Leghorn have to be content with such mechanical mothering? Not at all! Right in the middle of the brooder sat the old Red Ally, and her huge red wings were stretched out to cover about twenty-five of the metal-born babies and part of her own fifteen, and spread in a close, but fluffy, circle around her were the rest of her adopted family all cosily asleep and happy at heart. "I left the top of the brooder open while I went for water the second day after hers and the incubator's had hatched, and when I came back she was just as you see her now, in possession of the entire orphan-asylum." "Oh, look, she's putting some out from under her and taking others in. Oh, Ann!" exclaimed Bess as she dropped on her knees beside the long box. "Yes; she changes them like that. I've seen her do it," I answered, with my cheeks as pink with excitement as were those of my sympathetic friend, Elizabeth Rutherford. "And you ought to see her take them all out for a walk across the grass. They all peep and follow, and she clucks and scratches impartially." "Ann," said Bess, with a great solemnity in the dark eyes that she raised to mine, "I suppose I ought to marry Owen _this_ June. I want to have another winter of good times, but I--I'm ashamed to look this hen in the face." "Owen is perfectly lovely," I answered her, which was a very safely noncommittal answer in the circumstances.