They were starting with the twelve fowls the Dunks had left on the estate. Now if one hen in one year brought up three clutches of chickens, how many would that make? Hermie, with shining eyes, cried thirty-nine; but Bart, who had seen mortality among chickens, refused to put down more than twenty.
'Very well,' said Hermie, 'count twenty, if you like, only I know it will be thirty-nine, I shall be so careful of them. Twelve hens with twenty chickens each—that will be—that will be—what are twelve twenties, Miss Browne?'
'Two hundred and forty,' replied the lady, amazed herself that it could be so much, 'two hundred and forty! Why, I have never seen so many together in my life.'
Bart wrote down the figures two hundred and forty.
'Fowls grow up in six months,' Hermie said. 'Lizzie says so, and her mother used to keep fowls. The Journal says—I read it this morning—that fowls generally lay two hundred eggs a year.'
'Say one hundred and fifty,' Bart said.
'Very well,' said Hermie. 'Please, Miss Browne, what are two hundred and forty times one hundred and fifty?'
'My dear,' gasped Miss Browne, 'I—I really need a pencil for that.'
Bart offered his stump, and Miss Browne was five minutes working the sum, so sure was she she must have made an astounding mistake somewhere.
'It—it certainly comes to thirty-six thousand,' she said at last.