’We have counted that half that come out die,’ she said, ’and Lizzie says her mother always reared ten out of every thirteen. We have only counted six. But count three, if you like; still, that is thirty thousand pounds. And we have not counted selling any.’
Even Bart saw the moderation that only counted three chickens to each hatching, and his doubts died away.
Visions of all this wealth intoxicated the children; they tore their father from his book; Hermie told him, with eyes ashine with tears and little heaving breast, that he was never to do any more of that dreadful ploughing, that in three years they would be making thirty thousand a year, at least, by no harder work than just feeding the fowls and packing up eggs.
He smiled at them very gently; he could not bear to damp their ardour. In very truth he could not exactly find out why these figures should not be as they seemed.
’Of course you would have a huge feed-bill and want a big run of land,’ he said.
Bart gave a comprehensive sweep of his young arm towards the scrubby bush-land that lay around them.
’As much as we like for a shilling an acre a year,’ he said.
’Five thousand a year would buy enough at all events, and still we’d have twenty-five thousand left,’ Hermie said jubilantly. ’You will give up the ploughing, won’t you, daddie?’
Cameron temporised, and said he would just do a little while the chickens grew.
That night a violent wind came up with drenching rain. Cameron lay listening to it, wondering what skies were over the head of his beloved whom the seas held from him.
Then he heard doors opening and shutting, whispered words, and finally a series of very angry cackles. He threw on some clothes, and went to find out the meaning. In the living-room an oil lamp was flaring in the draught, a Plymouth rock was roosting on the piano top, a white Leghorn was regarding the sofa suspiciously. On the floor sat Hermie, rubbing a wrathful fowl dry with a Turkish bath-towel, and presently in staggered Bartie and Miss Browne, the former with five fowls by the legs, the latter nervously holding one at arm’s length.
Cameron fell into a convulsion of silent laughter, so earnest were the children, so absorbed. And Miss Browne, poor Miss Browne, how ludicrous she looked with her scanty hair flying ragged round her shoulders, her figure clad in an ancient mackintosh, her mouth frightened, her eyes heroic with the endeavour not to let go the fowl, which twisted itself madly to peck at her trembling hand!