"If you can stand to 'bach it,' as I do, Mr. Strong, you can make yourself comfortable up there at Sunnyside, and no thanks to anybody."
"But you say the house is burned down!"
"That's right. The last fellow who was on the farm, however, went in strong for poultry. Believed in fowls—it was a religion with him. And I take it a man has got to make 'em his religion really to get anything out of them. I never had the patience myself."
"I believe eighty per cent. of those who try hens for profit, fail; but the successful ones can easily enough point out the reasons for those failures," said Hiram.
"Well, maybe. However, that Brandenburg who lived at Sunnyside last fixed up a pretty good hen plant. After the fire he went in a hurry. Feared he would be blamed, perhaps. And I guess that Pringle woman would have done something to him if she could have got the law on him."
"Miss Delia Pringle?" Hiram asked, with some curiosity.
"Yes. Her folks owned pretty near all the land around here two or three generations ago. That's why it is called Pringleton. Sounds like a nursery rhyme. She sold Sunnyside to Stephen Bronson, same as she sold me this place."
"Indeed?"
"This was the old Pringle homestead. Built before the Flood, or thereabout," said Battick. "That is why it is rat-ridden. The rodents had it to themselves for years, while the farm lay idle. It had not been cropped to death by tenants; that is why I bought it. You will find part of Sunnyside in worse shape than this old place was. Miss Pringle had one tenant after another on the big farm, each one worse than the previous incumbent. I hope Stephen Bronson got it cheap enough."
"You intimated I might find some means of housekeeping up there, after all," said Hiram. "What did you mean?"