"I see mother ewe knows enough to hang around the lady of the barn and feed-bins. Those lambkins are two pounds heavier than any born within a week of them at Plunkett's," Pan had said not a week past, and both sheep mother and I had beamed with gratified pride at his commendation.
I put his babykins in a big feed-basket and the lamb twins came and welcomed him
Then while the renovation of the four-posters went on with a happy buzz, I busied myself in and out and about with the numberless details of care of the Bird family. My knowledge of music earned by many long hours in the practice of harmonics and a delighted and diligent attendance at the opera seasons of New York, Berlin, and Paris, to say nothing of Boston and London, had not, in my new life, in any way aided me to see that I had made a mistake in ordering a three-hundred-egg incubator to start building a prize flock with Mr. Golden Bird and the ten Ladies Leghorn, but in this case Adam had guided me from off that shoal, and by telegram I had changed the order for three fifty-egg improved metal mothers and the implements needed in accomplishing their maternal purpose. In one of them were now fifty beautiful white pearls that I could not refrain from visiting and regarding through the little window in the metallic side of the metallic mother at least several times an hour, though I knew that twice a day to regulate the heat and fill the lamp was sufficient.
"I don't believe I'll be able to stand seeing them hop out," I remarked to Baby Tillett, the lambkins, and the good old red ally, who was patiently seated on a box over fifteen of the pearls. Adam had kept the poor old darling covering some white china eggs for nearly two weeks before he gave her the pearls on the same day we put the forty-five in the interior of her metal rival. I didn't at first understand his sinister purpose in thus holding her back until the metal rival could get an even start, but I did later.
"I hope you have a mighty good hatching, Nancy, but I have no faith in half-way measures, and a tin box is a half-way measure for a hen, just as cleaning house without bed-sunning is trifling," said Mrs. Addcock, with a final prod as she came out to the barn with Mrs. Tillett to reclaim Baby Tillett.
"You ain't married, Miss Nancy, and you won't understand how babies need mothers, even the chicken kind," said Mrs. Tillett, as she cuddled Baby Tillett gurglingly against her shoulder and followed in the wake of Mrs. Addcock with the mops and buckets down the walk and around the house.
I stood beside the tin triumph of science, with my baby lambs licking at my hands, while Mrs. Ewe nuzzled for corn in one of my huge pockets, and a baby collie, which Pan had brought the week before, when her eyes were scarcely open, tumbled about my feet, and looked after the retreating women—and I did understand.
"Still, I'll do the best I can by your—your progeny, Mr. G. Bird," I said as the great big, white old fellow came and pecked in my pocket for corn in perfect friendliness with Mrs. Ewe.