Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/137

 After that, whenever an ailing chicken was brought to me for treatment, I usually clapped the duster over it and let nature take its course. Sometimes, it is true, when I lifted the duster to take a look at the patient, the patient was dead; but then it was quiet, and that’s something. I feel a great pride in being the discoverer of the feather-duster mother, and am quite sure that no other poultry preserve in the United States has as yet realized its possibilities.

That evening I advised Tom to look around for “Dr. Mary Walker,” as I feared she had met with some mishap. Returning later, he said: “Your fears were groundless. When I closed the door of the chicken-house, I glanced over the inmates, and, lo and behold, in the front row of the dress circle sat her Majesty ‘wrapped in the solitude of her own originality.’ She seemed quite at peace with herself and the world. If she had been on the ground floor, I believe I would have slapped her.”

It proved to be a clear case of desertion; finding the duties of motherhood irksome, she had shaken them off, leaving her children to me to bring up, as Mrs. Joe Gargery brought up Pip, “by hand.”