Bart gave a comprehensive sweep of his young arm towards the scrubby bush-land that lay around them.
'As much as we like for a shilling an acre a year,' he said.
'But the feed-bill?'
'Five thousand a year would buy enough at all events, and still we'd have twenty-five thousand left,' Hermie said jubilantly. 'You will give up the ploughing, won't you, daddie?'
Cameron temporised, and said he would just do a little while the chickens grew.
That night a violent wind came up with drenching rain. Cameron lay listening to it, wondering what skies were over the head of his beloved whom the seas held from him.
Then he heard doors opening and shutting, whispered words, and finally a series of very angry cackles. He threw on some clothes, and went to find out the meaning. In the living-room an oil lamp was flaring in the draught, a Plymouth rock was roosting on the piano top, a white Leghorn was regarding the sofa suspiciously. On the floor sat Hermie, rubbing a wrathful fowl dry with a Turkish bath-towel, and presently in staggered Bartie and Miss Browne, the former with five fowls by the legs, the latter nervously holding one at arm's length.
Cameron fell into a convulsion of silent laughter, so earnest were the children, so absorbed. And Miss Browne, poor Miss Browne, how ludicrous she looked with her scanty hair flying ragged round her shoulders, her figure clad in an ancient mackintosh, her mouth frightened, her eyes heroic with the endeavour not to let go the fowl, which twisted itself madly to peck at her trembling hand!
'I don't know what you are laughing for, papa,' Hermie said, a trifle offended. 'The fowl-house leaks dreadfully.'
'But it has rained half a dozen nights since we came; you never brought the things in here before, my child,' he urged.