As the two women were going home from market, one of them began to prophesy how many good things she would be able to get by the next gale—rent—day.
She had two sitting of eggs to take home, and she reasoned: Twenty-six eggs will bring me at least twenty chickens; each chicken will begin laying in the spring. I shall get so many eggs every day; seven times twenty will be one hundred and forty eggs every week. I can sell them, and the money will buy——
But a stop was put to her calculation by her friend, who asked:
“But what’ll you do if the chickens are all roosters?”
The other was sure they wouldn’t be.
The women wrangled and got to high words, and at last one declared she could tell by the yolks whether the egg would produce a hen or a rooster.
Challenged to the proof, she broke all the eggs to prove her assertion; and then suddenly remembered that no chickens at all could be hatched from broken eggs.
Ponsonby should have thought of that, and have defeated the Mahdi before he counted his profits.
The Mahdi was receiving recruits daily.
Men who were fanatics; desperate fighters because they believed the triumph of the prophet was the triumph of religion.