Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/99

Rh petty cost of a fence and a few coops by the side of a sum like that?"

"Nothing at all," I answered. "It is lost like a drop in the ocean. I hate, my dear, to interfere in any way with such a splendid calculation as that, but I would like to ask you one question."

"Oh, of course," she said, "I suppose you are going to say something about the cost of feeding all this poultry. That is to come out of the chickens supposed to die. They won't die. It is ridiculous to suppose that each hen will bring up but five chickens. The chickens that will live out of those I consider as dead, will more than pay for the feed."

"That is not what I was going to ask you, although, of course, it ought to be considered. But you know you are only going to set common hens, and you do not intend to raise any. Now, are those four hens to do all the setting and mother-work for five years, and eventually bring up over sixty-four thousand chickens?"

"Well, I did make a mistake there," she said, colouring a little. "I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll set every one of my hens every year."

"But all those chickens may not be hens. You have calculated that every one of them would set as soon as it was old enough."

She stopped a minute to think this over.

"Two heads are better than one, I see," she said directly. "I'll allow that one-half of all the chickens are roosters, and that will make the profit twenty-four thousand three hundred dollars— more than enough to buy this place."

"Ever so much more," I cried. "This Rudder Grange is ours!"