"Let it alone!" he broke out, sharply. "Where are you going with it?"
"Home," she said, with a queer, quizzical face. "Let it smell the green fields, Doctor. Ledgers and copperas are not good food for a chicken's soul, or body either."
"Let it alone!" he growled. "You take it for a type of yourself, eh? It has another work to do than to grow fat and sleep about the barnyard."
She opened the cage.
"I think I will take it."
"No," he said, quietly. "It has a master here. Not P. Teagarden. Why, Margret," pushing his stubby finger between the tin bars "do you think the God you believe in would have sent it here without a work to do?"
She looked up; there was a curious tremour in his flabby face, a shadow in his rough voice.
"If it dies here, its life won't have been lost. Nothing is lost. Let it alone."
"Not lost?" she said, slowly, refastening the cage. "Only I think"——
"What, child?"