1 82 IDLEHURST : 



balanced between his stick and the beer bottle, 

 crawled slowly down the lane. 



I went back to the garden across a grass-plot 

 where the poultry coops are generally set. Here I 

 found Lucy Sayers in trouble at the loss of two more 

 chicks of a dwindling family trodden flat by the 

 mother-hen, who had broken several of the eggs in 

 sitting, and seemed likely to make an end of the six 

 that were hatched. 



" The hens don't seem to have no sense," says 

 Lucy, holding up a dismal little corpse by the leg ; 

 " people might expect they wouldn't kill their own 

 chicks. And what with over-eating themselves, and 

 getting wet through, and getting over the fence, and 

 never the sense to get back again it's a wonder 

 there's any eggs at all, let alone pullets." 



Lucy is right, though her strenuous mind puts the 

 ideal higher than most. She racks some two thousand 

 seven hundred eggs a year from a score of birds, at 

 a saving of about one hundred and fifty per cent, on 

 the village shop prices. But the brainless habits of 

 the poultry yard are no doubt a heavy loss to the 

 whole account. 



In the garden I noticed that the yellow fungus had 

 spread widely on the hollyhocks, some of the clumps 

 being almost leafless at the base, and the orange 



