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Show BY ELSIE ENDICOTT. ENS Is mighty queer fm 1 " tLi critters, Miss Letty." j jrffntar said old Jason, the ; (Sog-HJ miller, pushing back yRfl his mealy cap. "I fi'm don't know of noth-HjS3h noth-HjS3h ing that will induce i-SiI 'em to lay if they MStMuL aint ready! This -f'f : cold, damp spell has; ' r Eort of put 'em back, I I guess. Nobody I seems to be getting any egg", but John I Danforth. Maybe be can tell you, what the trouble is.'' "I will try this new mixture, thank you, Jason." returned Miss Lett.,, crisply. "You will be sure to send It this afternoon?" "Yes, yes!" said Jason cordially, but reminding her that it was not customary for blm to deliver a quarter's quar-ter's worth of feed. And he turned back into the inner office, where a young man was moodily turning over the catalogue on the dusty desk. "It 6eems a pity to see 'Squire' Brown's daughter buying chicken feed by the pound, John." he remarked, seriously. se-riously. "And I'm afraid them hens mean more to her than we realize. But she's too proud to let anybody know if she half staned!" "Yes," returned John Danforth, "she is too proud!" Letty Brown walked down the street wearily. The purso in her handsome alligator bag was menacingly menac-ingly empty. "Just 72 cents after paying for the chicken feed." she figured; "and two weeks before I can da the $10 interest in-terest money. I don't dare draw on tho principal I don't dare! It is so little, and I may need it so much worse some other time. If only the , I hens would lay!" At the corner she deviated through ! , a dreary side street; not yet could 1 sho bring herself to go past the dear old house where she was born, and Which she had been forced to leave j JOHN. that sad November time when her father's death revealed the condition of his finances. "I ought to be thankful," she reminded re-minded herself virtuously, "that I have the cottage and tho hens and grandmother's legacy. If only the legacy were bigger I and the cottage wasn't under tho very shadow of John Danforth's big house, and the hens would not refuse to lay," sho amended. An hour later, arrayed In a dingy calico wrapper. Miss Letty went out to her poultry house. The flock rushed rush-ed noisily to meet her. "Yes. I have your supper, greedy things," she greeted them; "but how ; do you repay me? 1 have watered' and fed you all winter; shoveled snow ' to get to you; never once forgotten1 you. Yet you have not given me eggs enough to keep from getting hungry! I cannot keep it up much longer; when this teed is gone 1 shall begin roasting you unless jou do better!" After the fowls were made com-tortable com-tortable for the night. Miss Letty! did what she had done every day all winter sho looked hopelessly through the square wooden boxes used as nests. In one. high up, was a small, i brown e. "Oh," cried she. holding it, care-! fully in both hands, "something for j Bupper beside bread and lea! I kno H is worth three cents, Letty Brown, but 1 am weak in my kneed for something some-thing nourishing, so you keep still!" The little brown egg certainly put new life into the heart-sick girl in the old cottage. Early next morning she was out in the chicken yard, working! bjsily. "Today," she remarked cheerily, "you must lay two eggs; and tomorrow tomor-row four- and the next but I musn't 1 get over 14, must I? Weli, if you will lay a dozen a week, for you do not! stop work for Sunday. What wealth that will be!" Tho weather had changed and the dav was sunny and still. As she, worked about the house. Letty listened listen-ed hopefully for some disturbance from the chicken house. In tho ad-' joining yard there was an incessant clatter of shrill, cackling voices, but her own was ominously silent "I don't know as I could hear just1 ono hen cackle above that racket, any-J way," sho said, a little spitefully, as Bhe scattered the midday feeding over the sunnv yard. "Now u-iderstaud, ll shall expect two eggs toDight." LETTY. Very anxiously Mi ; Letty grouped j through the high nests that evening. Again there was one little brown egg. ' But she continued doggedly to inspect j each shadowy box. In the last ono, ! down next to the littlo door through which the hens ran to the back park in summer, her hand came in contact with something that brought her heart to her throat. Carefully, lin-I lin-I gerinly, she placed them in the feed pall nine bermtlful brown eggs. I "I do not understand." she murmur ed, w onderlngly. "It seems to good i to be true." Steadily, hopefully, the eggB daily increased, or at least held their own. I Letty sang about her work. "If they lay like this all summer," she thought, "I'll put my Interest money in the bank and not have another an-other such a horror of a winter as I had last." She even nooded kindly to John Danforth when she saw him pottering potter-ing about his own poultry yards. "I wonder what he would think if ho could know how many eggs I am getting," she thought with a 6mlle of amusement. "He was so certain I did not know how to take care of hens! He has always been certain t could not get along without him, someway! " The amusement faded from her face and she went Into her little kitchen and sat down in sudden dejection. "Why can I not forgot9" she cried in bitterest self-scorn. "What a goose I am" How she had trusted him! How happv she had been! Even in her childhood he had been her best friend. And then to have him fall a victim to a pair of dancing eyes and a coquet-lsh coquet-lsh smile! "Of course I do not blame him," she said aloud, glancing involuntarily involuntar-ily into the mirror opposite. "I know I am plain and little and 'everyday.' But how could I ever trust him again?" "But he was true, afterward," said an insistent voice within her. "and he wanted to como back!" "Yes," said Betty proudly, "h wanted want-ed to come back to Squire Brown's daughter! But has he ever wanted to come back to Letty Brown of his xceather-beaten old cottage?" "Hasen't he wanted to shovel yourj paths, and make your garden, and care for your hens? continued the voice. "And haven't you discouraged him at every turn'" "I will not have his pity!" flashed the squire's daughter "He forgot me for a frivolous young thing who never cared for him." "But he admitted his fault honestly JASON. and manfully, and begged your for-1 givn09S." And Letty seemed to hear again his weary voice: "Did you never make a mistake, I Letty?" "Not that kind," she had retorted , with a crlspness for which the Browns wero noted. Miss Letty squared her shoulders determinedly. "I may as well gather the eggs before be-fore supper," 6he said, in a matter-of-fact way, returning to her prosaic duties. IB:' y -"-4 But where she had smiled hltherta E I over the fullness of her basket, she I I frowned bew ilderedly. Slowly she I counted them over again. E-' I No! there was no mistake about It If ' fifteen large brown eggs reposed In lift the basket. Fifteen eggs, and only 14 W. hens! EV''"' With lips compressed In a dlspleas K ed line, she scrutinized the building. K . e The front park was close and strong, B'i ; -M no wondering hen could possibly en- W v I tor. The narrow gate In the back V I park flapped loosely on Its father I An imprint on the half-dry mud, footmarks showed from the neighboring neighbor-ing park to the little door at the back j of her henhouse! No hen had left that "John," she cailed returning to the extra egg in her nests! front of the building, "will you come over her a moment?" j Dantorth leaped the fence lightly. I ettj wanted him! "Here," she said demurely, holding out the basket, "are your eggs. I am sorry I have sold the others, but I will return tho amount as Boon as I can " His lips quivered a little wltb t&o disappointment and humiliation of It all. j "There are 15 eggs," she could not help smiling at his embarrassed face, "and I have only 14 hens." "Letty," he cried, with sudden ve- hemence, "I'll take them back. After dark, I'm coming for the hens also. I can make them lay! And tomorrow I I am coming for you, dear. Let us j have a happy Easter, sweetheart!" And there among the feathered flock he took her in his arms. 1 "I'll need you. dear," he whispered, 1 I "to count tho eggs!" J J-- J |
