Eustace was taken aback. "Surely you wouldn't expect me to do that!" he said.
"I don't see why not. I've been sitting here for over two weeks, and now it seems only fair that you should take your turn."
"But, my dear duckling," he protested, "it would never do! It would look unmanly. Think how Clarence would crow over me!"
"That's it!" she said scornfully. "That's the way it is with you drakes! You haven't the spunk to do what you ought to, for fear some old libertine of a rooster will make fun of you!"
"But, darling ..."
"Oh you males! You expect a female to give up everything for motherhood, and yet you aren't willing, or are afraid, to do anything to make her life endurable!"
"But I should think you would be happy, with such beautiful eggs as these," he ventured in a conciliatory tone. "Look at Martha: she seems quite blissful over hers, and yet they aren't nearly as large or as white."
This allusion had just the wrong effect. "Now don't try to set up that stupid hen as an example for me!" she snapped indignantly. "All her life she's done nothing but lay eggs and sit on them. And what is the result?—she hasn't an idea under her comb, no, not even sense enough to know that Clarence is carrying on disgracefully with other chickens."
Eustace, feeling uncomfortable, tried to interpose a pacifying remark, but she did not give him a chance.
"It's females like that who have kept our sex in subjection. But I'm not one of them, let me tell you. I believe in a communal incubator."