"An' very nice too," agreed Mrs. Grimps; "I must say I likes an egg for my tea," she added, "only them cocks do fight so."
"Well, I shouldn't get too many," continued Mrs. Sawney, "say three cocks an' three 'ens. They ought to get on nicely together."
These remarks had reference to a one-time project of Mrs. Bindle to supply her table with new-laid eggs, in the pursuit of which she had purchased three pairs of birds, equally divided as to sex.
"That was the only time I ever enjoyed a bit o' cock-fightin' on my own," Bindle was wont to remark, when telling the story of Mrs. Bindle's application of the rule of monogamy to a fowl-run.
He had made one endeavour to enlighten Mrs. Bindle upon the fact that the domestic cock (she insisted on the term "rooster") had neither rounded Cape Turk, nor weathered Seraglio Point; but he was told not to be disgusting, Mrs. Bindle's invariable rejoinder when sex matters cropped up. He had therefore desisted, enjoying to the full Mrs. Bindle's efforts to police her new colony.
In those days, the Bindle's back garden had been a riot of flying feathers, belligerent cocks and squawking hens, chivvied about by Mrs. Bindle, armed with mop or broom.
Mrs. Sawney and a Mrs. Telcher, who had preceded Mrs. Grimps in the occupancy of No. 5, had sat at their bedroom windows, laughing until the tears ran down their dubious cheeks and their sides ached. When their mirth permitted, they had tendered advice; but for the most part they were so weak from laughing that speech was denied them.
Mrs. Bindle's knowledge of the ways of fowls was limited; but it embraced one important piece of information—that without "roosters", hens would not lay. When Bindle had striven to set her right, he had been silenced with the inevitable, "Don't be disgusting."
She had reasoned that if hens were stimulated to lay by the presence of the "male bird", then a cavalier each would surely result in an increased output.
The fowls, however, had disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and thereafter Bindle realised that it was neither safe nor politic to refer to the subject. It had taken a plate of rice, hurled at his head from the other side of the kitchen, to bring him to this philosophical frame of mind.