Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/122

 of the eggless basket, “I have heard that hens never lay just at first, upon making a change of location;” adding consolingly, “but I guess we’ll get a half-dozen or so to-morrow.”

Several more days passed, and still there was no offering from the poultry-yard. I then ventured to ask, “Tom, do you think you feed the chickens enough?”

“Feed them enough? They look as if suffering from goitre; their crops are puffed out like toy balloons.”

“Then perhaps you feed them too much.”

“There you go now!”

“Well, I read to-day that hens should forage for a part of their living.”

“But if they won’t forage, what then? These chickens just stand on tiptoe round the granary, with their eyes fastened on the door, and never budge from there until it is time to waddle off to bed.”

A depressing silence followed this declaration; it certainly seemed a most baffling problem. After deep thought the lady remarked: “I’ve just been wondering, Tom, whether you really know how to hunt hens’ nests.”

“Good gracious, Katharine! I should think almost any man of average sense could, if he would bring the weight of his intellect to bear upon it, hunt hens’ nests!”

“You know that I mean find nests!”

“I can find these all right, having made them myself.”

“Oh! have you made some nests?”