“Me and Jake built this,” said he. “Jake’s my brother.”
He unbuckled a strap that fastened the gate, and we went inside. A few fowls, of breeds unfamiliar to me, were scratching about the yard.
“Don’t you call them nice hens?” said he.
“I guess they are,” said I; “but I don’t know much about hens.”
“Don’t you?” said he. “Then I’ll tell you something about them. There’s money in hens. Father says so, and I know it’s so. I made fifty-one dollars and thirteen cents on these last year. I wish I had a million.”
“A million dollars,” said I, “is a good deal of money. I should be satisfied with one tenth of that.”
“I meant a million hens,” said he. “I’d rather have a million hens than a million dollars.”
I went through a mental calculation similar to the one I had indulged in while riding with the teamster: “Fifty-one, thirteen—almost two thousand years. Great Cæsar! Yes, Great Cæsar sure enough! I ought to have begun keeping hens about the time Cassius was egging on the conspirators to lay out that gentleman. But I forgot the interest again. Call it fifteen hundred.”
“Let’s go in and look at the nests,” said the boy, opening the door of the shed.
The nests were in a row of boxes nailed to the wall. He took out some of the eggs, and showed them to me. Several had pencil-writing on the shell, intended to denote the breed. I remember Gaim, Schanghy, and Cotching.