"I'm saving them for hatching."
"Can't save your eggs and pay your debts, too," Gramps pointed out. "How many you got laid by?"
"Forty-four."
"Pat Haley'll buy 'em, and now that your hens have started laying something bigger'n robin's eggs, he'll pay better. You can pay me off and still have forty, fifty cents for yourself."
Bud looked at the old man. Sometimes he knew how to take Gramps, but this time he wasn't sure. "I have to save them," he said.
"You don't have to do anything of the kind," Gramps said. "If you're saving eggs it's 'cause you want to, and if you want to, it's 'cause you got something in mind. You aim to hatch those eggs?"
"Yes. I think the little house will hold maybe twenty hens and a rooster."
"'Bout right," Gramps conceded. "So you have seven in there now and forty-four eggs saved. If you get an eighty per cent hatch, and that won't be bad for a rooster as don't yet know too much 'bout his business, you'll have thirty-five more chickens. So that makes forty-two in a twenty-one hen house. It don't add up."
Bud said quickly, "That isn't what I have in mind. I'll keep fourteen of the best pullets and sell all the rest."
"Something in that," Gramps admitted. "Pat Haley'll pay you the going price for both fryers and broilers. Take out the cost of feed, and if you're lucky, come fall you could have ten or fifteen dollars for yourself."