



Produced by Charles Franks, Robert Rowe and the Online
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The Road To Providence


by

Maria Thompson Daviess




CONTENTS

    I  THE DOCTORS MAYBERRY, MOTHER AND SON
   II  THE SINGER LADY AND THE BREAD-BOWL
  III  THE PEONY GIRL AND 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