“What a shame!” And with the back of a hand whose fingers were covered with corn-meal, she brushed a stray lock from her face.
“Yes,” he went on, “it’s a calamity, for we cannot afford it. I took an account of stock while I was down there, and all we have now in the way of vegetables is the dried apples. Of 154course, there’s the garden truck,–the peas, beans, and the corn,–if it ever ripens.”
After further conversation on that subject, Elinor said, with a sigh: “Well, we did enjoy those baked potatoes! We shall have to eat more eggs, that’s all.”
“Eggs!” and his face became distorted. “I am so chock full of eggs now that everything looks yellow. I dream of them. I cackle in my sleep. My whole interior is egg. I breathe and think egg. I gag when I hear a hen.”
“But you are going to eat them all the same. We have a dozen a day, and you must do your share.”
“I won’t.”
“Yes, you will.”
As Pats’s eyes fell on Solomon, he brightened up. “There’s that dog eats only the very things we are unable to spare. Why shouldn’t he eat eggs?”
“You might try and teach him.”
“Tell me,” said Pats, “why hens should lay nothing but eggs, always eggs? Why shouldn’t they lay pears, lemons, tomatoes,–things we really need?”