“What’s that?” asked Gabriel, startled out of his fury at Mrs. Cowslip, although he could feel streams of warm milk trickling down into his boots. “Only four, Amanda? The hull dozen was there, yesterday. I took the hen off an’ counted ’em.”
They looked at each other as though stunned by a calamity too dreadful for words. Amanda was first to recover her speech. Her eye traveled down Gabriel’s soaking garments to the tin pail bottom up on the ground, and, with the genuine feminine logic which men find so charming in such moments, she said:—
“Gabe, I do believe you’ve spilled all the morning’s milk!”
“No,” drawled the Poet soothingly, “he has it all in his pockets.”
“Hush, George,” said Galatea. And then to Amanda:—
“Were the eggs valuable ones?”
“Valuable!” exclaimed Gabriel. “They was only one settin’ of ’em in th’ hull county. Amanda was crazy for ’em, and so was Si Blodgett, darn the old hypocrite! He and Amanda bid against each other till I had to pay fifty cents apiece for them eggs!”
“Oh dear!” said Galatea. “Then they weren’t hen’s eggs at all?”
“Hen eggs? I should say not. They were Golden Guinea eggs, and no more to be had for love or money.”
Mrs. Cowslip and Gustavius lowed dismally, casting dust upon their heads.