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 a mop, and returned to the scene of their labors. Brose was again ahead of them. He had taken down the smoke-stack and was covering the hole in the roof with a piece of zinc sheeting. "I was thinking," he explained, "that she might want to use this place for something, and there was a lot of water coming in around that old funnel. After I paint around the edges of this it'll be tight." Brose drove a last flat-headed nail and swung his legs over the side of the boiler-room. "I was thinking that maybe she'd like to keep a few hens in here."

"Hens!" cried the quartet below in incredulous chorus.

Brose nodded. "Yeah, she was always fond of hens, Miss Pansy. Used to have quite a lot of 'em until her fences got sort of bad and they took to wandering into other folks' yards. There wouldn't be much trouble here, I guess. They could go ashore and wander as much as they pleased and not hurt anything."

Ned broke into laughter. "Can't you see Miss Comfort's hens filing ashore every morning with a big red rooster in the lead?"

"Sure," agreed Brose. "Put up half a dozen