The Road To Providence | Page 4

THE BUMPKIN IV LOVE, THE CURE-ALL V THE LITTLE

RAVEN AND HER COVERED DISH VI THE PROVIDENCE
TAG-GANG VII PRETTY BETTIE'S WEDDING DAY VIII THE
NEST ON PROVIDENCE NOB IX THE LITTLE HARPETH
WOMAN OF MANY SORROWS X THE SONG OF THE
MASTER'S GRAIL

CHAPTER I
THE DOCTORS MAYBERRY, MOTHER AND SON
"Now, child, be sure and don't mix 'em with a heavy hand! Lightness is
expected of riz biscuits and had oughter be dealt out to 'em by the
mixer from the start. Just this way--"
"Mother, oh, Mother," came a perturbed hail in Doctor Mayberry's
voice from the barn door, "Spangles is off the nest again--better come
quick!"
"Can't you persuade her some, Tom?" Mother called back from the
kitchen door as she peered anxiously across the garden fence and over
to the gray barn where the Doctor stood holding the door half open, but
ready for a quick close-up in case of an unexpected sally. "My hands is
in the biscuits and I don't want to come now. Just try, Tom!"
"I have tried and I can't do it! She's getting the whole convention
agitated. You'd better come on, Mother!"
"Dearie me," said Mrs. Mayberry, as she rinsed her hands in the
wash-pan on the shelf under tin cedar bucket, "Tom is just as helpless
with the chickens at setting time as a presiding elder is at a sewing
circle; can't use a needle, too stiff to jine the talk and only good when it
comes to the eating, from broilers to frying size. Just go on and mix the
biscuits with faith, honey-bird, for I mistrust I won't be back for quite a
spell."
"Now let me see what all these conniptions is about," she said in a
commanding voice, as she walked boldly in through her son's

cautiously widened door gap.
And a scene of confusion that was truly feminine met her capable
glance. Fuss-and-Feathers, a stylish young spangled Wyandotte, was
waltzing up and down the floor and shrieking an appeal in the direction
of a whole row of half-barrel nests that stretched along the dark and
sequestered side of the feed-room floor, upon which was established
what had a few minutes before been a placid row of setting hens. Now
over the rim of each nest was stretched a black, white, yellow or gray
head, pop-eyed with alarm and reproach. They were emitting a chorus
of indignant squawks, all save a large, motherly old dominick in the
middle barrel who was craning her scaly old neck far over toward the
perturbed young sister and giving forth a series of reassuring and
commanding clucks.
"I didn't do a thing in the world to them, Mother," said Doctor Tom in a
deprecatory tone of voice, as if he were in a way to be blamed for the
whole excitement. "I was across the barn at the corn-crib when she
hopped off her nest and went on the rampage. Just a case of the modern
feminine rebellion, I wager."
"No such thing, sir! They ain't nothing in the world the matter with her
'cept as bad a case of young-mother skeer as I have ever had before
amongst all my hens. Don't you see, Tom, two of her setting have
pipped they shells and the cheepings of the little things have skeered
the poor young thing 'most to death. Old Dominick have took in the
case and is trying her chicken-sister best to comfort her. These here
pullet spasms over the hatching of the first brood ain't in no way
unusual. The way you have forgot chicken habits since you have
growed up is most astonishing to me, after all the helping with them I
taught you." As she spoke, Mother Mayberry had been rearranging the
deserted nest with practised hand and had tenderly lifted two feeble,
moist little new-borns on her broad palm to show to the Doctor.
"What are you going to do with them, Mother?" he asked, for though
his education in chicken lore seemed to have been in vain he was none
the less sympathetically interested in his mothers practice of the
hen-craft.

"I'm just going to give 'em to Old Dominick to dry out and warm up for
her while I persuade her back on the nest. As she gets used to hearing
the cheepings from under another hen she'll take the next ones that
come with less mistrust." And suiting her actions to her words Mother
Mayberry slipped the two forlorn little mites under a warm old wing
that stretched itself out with gentleness to receive and comfort them.
Some budding instinct had sent the foolish fluff of stylish feathers
clucking at her skirts, so she bent down and with a gentle and
sympathetic hand lifted the young inadequate back on the nest.