it is beautiful how sometimes deserving courage is rewarded if it just goes on deserving long enough. after about an hour's hand-to-saw bout with the old plank i was just chewing through the last inch of the last of the four sides of nest number two when i suddenly stopped and listened. far away to the front of the house i heard hot oaths being uttered by the engine in a huge racing-machine with a powerful chug with which i was quite familiar. while i listened, the motor in agony gave a snort as it bounded over some kind of obstruction and in two seconds, as i stood saw in hand, with not enough time to wipe the sweat of toil from my brow, the huge blue machine swept around the corner of the house, brought up beside the family coach, which was still standing in front of the barn, and matthew flung himself out of it and to my side.
"holy smokers, ann, but you look good in that get-up!" he exclaimed as he regarded me with the delight with which a person might greet a friend or relative whom he had long considered dead or lost. "why, you look just as if you had stepped right out of the 'elite review.' and the saw, too, makes a good note of human interest."
"well, it's chicken interest and not human, matthew berry," i said, answering his levity with spirit. "and i'm sorry i can't be at home for your amusement to-day, but my chickens are laying while i wait, and the least i can do is to get these nests ready for 'em. you'll excuse me, won't you, and go in to talk with father and uncle cradd?"
"they're not producing dividends already, are they, ann? why, you only started the consolidated egg co. yesterday!" exclaimed matthew, with insulting doubt of my veracity in his voice.
"look there!" i said, as i pointed to my two large pearls, which i had carefully put in the soft felt hat i had purchased to go with the smocks for fifteen dollars at goertz's.
"well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed matthew, with real astonishment, as he sat down on his heels and took the two treasures into his highly manicured hands. "gee, they are right hot off the bat!" he exclaimed, as he detected some of the warmth still left in them, i suppose.
"yes, and i've got to get these nests done right away so as to be ready to catch the rest of them," i said and began to saw furiously, as if i were constructing a bucket to catch a deluge.
"say, gimme the saw, ann, and you get the fodder and things to put in the bottom of them to keep them from smashing as they come," said matthew, as he flung off his coat, jammed his motor-cap on the back of his head, and took the saw from my unresisting hand.
"i'll get the whitewash and whiten them as you finish them," i said, as i hurriedly consulted the torn piece of wrapping-paper i took from one of the huge pockets of my smock.
"all right, but you had better hump yourself, for i believe i'm going to be some carpenter. this saw has a kind of affinity feeling to my hand," said matthew, as he put his foot on one end of the plank and began to make the saw fly through the wood like a silver knife through fluffy cake. if saws were the only witnesses, the superiority of men over women would be established in very short order. "and say, ann, i wish you would be thinking what you are going to charge for a half interest in this business. law and real estate look slow to me after these returns right before my eyes," he added, as he stopped to move the pearl treasures farther out of the way of a possible flying plank.
"i'm going to give you one of them to take home with you, matt," i answered, with a most generous return of his appreciation of these foundation pebbles of my family fortune. then i went to appeal to rufus for the whitewash.
"they's a half barrel uf lime and a bucket and bresh in the corner uf the barn what mas' adams made me git, he did; but it's fer the hawgs and can't be wasted on no chickens," he said, answering my very courteous request with a great lack of graciousness.
"the chickens will pay it back to the hogs, rufus," i answered airily as i ran back to the barn, eager for the fray.
and a gorgeous fray it was, with matthew whistling and directing and pounding and having the time of his very frivolous life.
now, of course, nobody in these advanced times thinks that it is not absolutely possible, even easy, for a woman to live any kind of constructive life she chooses entirely without assistance from a man, but she'll get to the place she has started for just about a year after she would have arrived if a man had happened along to do the sawing. the way my friend matthew berry cut and hammered off one by one the directions on that piece of paper in my smock pocket would have proved the proposition above stated to any doubtful woman. and while matthew and i had had many happy times together at balls and parties and dinners and long flights in our cars and at the theatre and opera, also in dim corners in gorgeous clothes, i am sure we had never been so happy as we were that morning while we labored together in the interest of mr. g. bird and family. we went beyond the paper directions and delved in my book and hammered away until, when rufus, with stately coldness, announced some time after noon that dinner was served, we both declared that it was impossible, though matthew was at that moment performing the last chore commanded by dusting the medicated ashes under the last wing of the last lady leghorn, held tenderly in my arms. the mash had been concocted and heated in the cleansed whitewash bucket over a fire improvised by matthew between two stones beside the barn, because i did not dare disturb rufus again, and the model nests were all in place and ready for the downpour of pearls that we expected at any time, and there was nothing left to do that we could think of or read about in the book.
"let's go in and get a bite with father craddock and the twin, and then we'll read things to do this afternoon in the book where you got those directions," said matthew as he started towards the house in the wake of rufus' retiring apron.
i hadn't broken pan to matthew, and i didn't know exactly why. perhaps i didn't quite believe in the red-headed peckerwood myself just then, and felt unable to incarnate him to matthew.
uncle cradd's welcome to matthew was very stately and friendly when we went in and found him and father in their high-back chairs on each side of the table, waging the classic argument that rufus had reported them to have discontinued at an early hour of the morning. father was delighted with the package of books that matthew had brought out with him in his car, because father considered them too valuable to be transported in the wagon which was to bring the rest of the library.
"just a little of the cream of the collection, cradd," he said as he unwrapped a small leather-covered volume which matthew had transported in the pocket over his heart.
"just five hundred dollars' worth of cream," whispered matthew to me, with a whimsical look at the small and very ancient specimen of americana. "it is a good thing that senator proctor has only belle and let her have the six thousand cash for the chauvenaise, and bess wanted your little royal in a hurry, though she got a bargain at that. still the library is really worth five times what you paid."
"sh—hush!" i said as i led the way before the parental twins into the old dining-room. father hadn't even questioned how he was to have the library saved for him, and of course uncle cradd knew nothing at all about the matter.
after seating me with the same ceremony he had employed since my arrival into the family, though with hostility bristling psychologically for my plebeian intrusion into his traditions of the craddock ladies, rufus appalled me by offering me for the third time since my arrival at elmnest roasted ribs of the hog, muffins and coffee. only my training in the social customs of a world beyond the ken of rufus kept me from exclaiming with protest, but i came to myself to discover that matthew was devouring huge slabs of the roasted bones and half a dozen batches of the corn bread in a manner that was ravenously unconventional. i remembered that the last time i had seen him at repast, just about forty-eight hours past, he had speared a croquette of chicken with disdain, and i decided not to apologize for the meal even in the most subtle way. also the spectacle of father polishing off the small bones, when i remembered the efforts of devoted henri to tempt his appetite with sophisticated food, filled me with a queer primitive feeling that made it possible for me to fall upon my series of the ribs with an ardor which i had thought i was incapable of.
"i call that some food," sighed matthew, as he regarded the pile of bones in his plate with the greatest satisfaction in his appeased eyes. i felt rufus melt behind me as he passed the muffins again.
"the native food of the harpeth valley nourishes specially fine men—and very beautiful women," answered uncle cradd, with a glance of pride, first at me and then at father in his spare, but muscular, uprightness and finally at matthew, with his one hundred and eighty pounds of brawn packed on his six-foot skeleton in the most beautiful lines and curves of strength and distinction.
"oh, that reminds me, mr. craddock, and you, too, father of ann," said matthew, as he reached into his pocket and hurriedly drew out a huge letter. "i have a proposition that came to the firm this morning to talk over with you two gentlemen. ann thought i came out to help her settle the bird family comfortably, and for a while i forgot and thought so too, but now i'll have to ask you two gentlemen to talk business, though i must confess the matter puzzles me not a little."
"the art of dining and the craft of business should never be commingled; let us repair to the library," said uncle cradd, thus placing the spare ribs in an artistic atmosphere and at the same time aiming an arrow of criticism, though unconscious, at the custom of the world out over paradise ridge of feeding business conditions down the throat of an adversary with his food and drink, specially drink.
"i don't know why, but i'm scared to death now that i'm up against it," matthew confided to me as he first took a legal-looking piece of paper from his pocket and then hastily put it back as he and i followed the parental twins down the hall and into the library.
"will you rescue me, ann?" he whispered as he ceremoniously seated me in my low chair and took a straight one beside father as uncle cradd stood tall, huge and towering on the old home-woven rug before the small fire in the huge rock chimney.
"yes," i answered as i settled back in the little chair and took one passionately delighted look around the old room, which i was seeing in the broad light of day for the first time. i am glad that the old home which had been the stronghold of my foremothers and fathers was thus revealed to me in half lights and a little at a time; i couldn't have stood the ecstasy of it all at once. the room was the low-beamed old wonder that i had felt it to be in the candle-light the night before, only now the soft richness of the paneling, which held back into the gloom the faded colors of the books that lined the walls, the mellowed glow of the rough stone of the chimney, and the faded hand-woven rugs on the floor made it all look like one of rembrandt's or franz hals' canvases. but in a few seconds i came back from the joy of it to a consciousness of what matthew berry was saying.
"you see," he was explaining with enthusiasm, "that this new form of office for the state commissioner of agriculture is really a part of the great program of preparedness that has been evolving here in america since the great war began, and nobody knows just what to expect of it as yet. the request from the president for the appointment of evan baldwin to take the portfolio in the state of harpeth has made everybody see that the president means business with the states, and that america is to be made to produce her own food and the food of the rest of the world that needs it. when a scientist like baldwin, worth millions and with experiment stations of hundreds of acres in most states in the union, which are coining more millions with their propagation output, steps out and stands shoulder to shoulder with edison in working to get the united states prepared to feed the world as well as to fend off any of that world that menaces it, the rest of us have got to get up and hustle, some with a musket and some with a plow."
"and some with an egg-basket," i added, as my cheeks began to glow with something i hadn't ever felt before, but which i classified as patriotism.
"my country has only to call us and we'll answer to the whole of our kingdom, william and i. we were lads too young to carry muskets against her in the civil war, but we, with rufus, plowed these acres with children's strength, and the larger portion of our products went to feed hungry soldiers both blue and gray. i say, just let my country call william and me!" as uncle cradd spoke, his back straightened, and i saw that he must have been every inch of six feet three in his youth. "william?"
"with you, cradd," answered father quietly, and i felt that that formula was the one by which they had lived their joint youth.
"well, that is about what they are asking of you, mr. craddock," said matthew, his cheeks red with the glow of the blood uncle cradd had called up in his enthusiastic heart. "the new state secretary of agriculture has asked our firm to undertake negotiations for the purchase of elmnest, for a recruiting station for the experts who are to take over the organizing of the farming interests in the harpeth valley, which is the central section of the state of harpeth. they offer three hundred dollars an acre for the whole tract of two hundred acres, despite the fact that some of it is worn almost to its subsoil. they consider that as valuable, because they wish to give demonstrations and try experiments in land restoration, though very little of that is needed here in the valley. it's a pretty big thing, mr. craddock and father william, sixty thousand dollars will provide all the—"
"did i understand that this proposition is put to us in the form of a demand of our government upon our patriotism?" asked uncle cradd in a booming voice, while father only looked uncertain and ready to say, "with you, cradd." i sat speechless for a moment, with a queer pain in my heart that i did not for the first second understand.
"well, not exactly that, mr. craddock, but something like it in a—" matthew was beginning to say in a judicial way.
"that is enough, matthew berry, son of the friend of my youth. if the united states needs elmnest for national defenses, i am willing to give it up—indeed insist on presenting it to the government except for a small part of the sum mentioned, which is needed for the simple and declining lives of my brother william, rufus, and me, and my niece nancy. will you so convey our answer, william?"
"with you, cradd," came the devoted formula with which father slipped back finally into the dependence of his youth.
"good, mr. craddock," exclaimed matthew, and i could see visions of ann craddock reclaimed from her farmer's smock in a ball-gown upon the floor of the country club in the fleeting glance of triumph he gave me. "of course, about the price—"
then in that counsel of the mighty arose ann craddock, farm woman in the stronghold of her worn-out acres.
"is it or is it not true, uncle cradd, that no deed to this property can be made without my consent?" i asked calmly.
"why, yes, nancy," answered uncle cradd, indulgently. "but this is a matter for your father and me to decide for you. i am sure you cannot fail in patriotism, my child."
"i don't," i answered. "i am going to be more patriotic than any woman ever was before. i am not going to sell my grandmother's rosebushes in their gardens or the acres that have nourished my family since its infancy in america long before this evan baldwin ever had any family, i feel sure, for sixty thousand dollars to go back and sit down in a corner with. i am going to demonstrate to the united states what one woman can do in the way of nutriment production aided by one beautiful rooster and ten equally beautiful hens, and when they begin to take stock of the resources of this government, we women of the harpeth valley will be there with our egg-baskets. just take that answer to your mr. evan baldwin, matthew berry, and i'll never forgive you for this insult."
"nancy!" ejaculated uncle cradd with stern amazement.
"can't do a thing with her when she looks like that, cradd," said father, as he comfortably lighted a cigar and drew the small leather-covered book towards him with hungry fingers.
"now, ann," began matthew, in the soothing tone of voice he had seen fail on me many times, "you don't understand entirely, and your situation is pretty desperate in—"
"i do, i do understand that when i refuse this offer i am assuming enormous obligations, matthew berry," i answered, with my head in the air and absolute courage in my heart.
"i ask you to bear witness, matthew, to what my answer to the demand of my country would have been if i alone could have answered, but nancy is within her rights, and i protect the rights of a woman before those of any man," said uncle cradd, and there was not a trace of relief in his fine old face that he was to be saved from a parting with the land that had been the love of his life, but one of affectionate regard and admiration for me. "also say to the secretary of agriculture that a craddock woman is as good as her word, and that the harpeth valley can be depended upon to lead the united states in the production of eggs in—when shall i promise, nancy?"
"about—about a year," i answered, searching in my mind for some data from the huge red book as to when wealth from the hen could be expected to roll in in response to the "good management" i felt even then capable of displaying. even now i can't blame myself for over-confidence when i think of the two white pearls in my hat on the table beside father's book.
"better make it two," advised matthew cautiously, but with a gleam of enthusiasm as he also glanced at the eggs. that gleam was what earned my forgiveness for his daring to come upon me with such a mission.
"say eighteen months. that will be the end of the second season," i answered with decision. "and it is about time for me to give the last feeding of my hostages to the united states and mr. evan baldwin. you'll excuse me, matthew?" i asked politely, but cruelly, for i knew he intended to follow me immediately.
"now here is your line of dispute, cradd, just as i said," exclaimed father, who had opened his leather treasure and been hunting through its pages even before my heroics had completely exploded. and before matthew and i had left the room, they were off on a bat with some favorite ancient.
