go the limit." "I shall be interested to see what success you have," says she. "Sure!" says I. "Drop around again—next fall." You wouldn't have thought she'd been disagreeable enough to go and rehearse all this innocent little bluff of mine to Vee, would you? But she does, it seems. And of course Vee has to back me up. "But, Torchy!" she protests, after Auntie's gone. "How could you tell her such whoppers?" "Easiest thing I do," says I. "But who knows what we'll do next in the nourishment producin' line? Hasn't old Leon been beggin'94 to go into the duck and chicken business for months? With eggs near a dollar a dozen maybe it would be a good scheme. And if we go in for poultry, why not have all kinds, turkeys as well?" 94 So a few days later I put it up to him. Leon shakes his head. "The chickens and the ducks, yes; but the turkey——" Here he shrugs his shoulders desperate. "Je ne connais pas." "You jennie what?" says I. "Ah, come, Leon, don't be a quitter." He explains that the ways of our national bird are a complete mystery to him. He'd as soon think of tryin' to hatch out ostriches or canaries. So for the time being we pass up the turkeys and splurge heavy on cacklers and quackers. Between him and Joe they fixed up part of the old carriage shed as a poultry barracks and with a mile or so of nettin' they fenced off a run down to the little pond. And by the middle of August we had all sorts of music to wake us up for an early breakfast. I nearly laughed a rib loose watchin' them baby ducks waddle around solemn, every one with that cut-up look in his eye. Say, they're born comedians, ducks are. I'll bet if you could translate that quack-quack patter of theirs you'd get lines that would be a reg'lar scream on the big time circuit. And then along in the fall we begun gettin' acquainted with our new neighbors that had95 taken that cute little stucco cottage halfway down to the station from us. The Basil Pynes, a young English couple, we found out they were. Course, Vee started it by callin' and followin' that up by a donation of some of our garden truck. Pretty soon we were swappin' visits reg'lar. 95 I can't say I was crazy over
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