“Do!” she said. “How can a fool be cured of his folly? That is the question I ask myself. If he denies himself the necessaries of life, how are you to give them to him?”
“Well,” said Sylvia, “I manage as best I can by hardly ever eating in his presence; he does not notice, particularly at breakfast. He enjoyed his egg and toast this morning, and really said nothing about my unwonted extravagance.”
“I have a plan in my head,” said Jasper, “which may or may not come to anything. You know those few miserable barn-door fowls which your father keeps just by the shrubbery in that old hen-house?”
“Yes,” replied Sylvia.
“Do they ever lay any eggs?”
“No.”
“I thought not. I wonder a prudent, careful man like Mr. Leeson should keep them eating their heads off, so to speak.”
“Oh, they don’t eat much,” replied Sylvia. “I got them when father spoke so much about the wasted potato-skins. I bought them from a gipsy. I did not know they were so old.”
“We must get rid of those fowls,” said Jasper. “You must tell your father that it is a great waste of money to keep them; and, my dear, we will give him fowl to eat for his dinner as long as the old fowls in the shrubbery last. There are ten of them. I shall sell them—very little indeed we shall get for them—and he will imagine he is eating them when he really is consuming a delicate little bird like the one you and I are going to enjoy for our dinner to-day.”
“What fun!” said Sylvia, the color coming into her cheeks and her eyes sparkling. “You do not think it is wrong to deceive him, do you?”