"A stall in the market," said Aunt Maggie to herself, when Bella had run home. "It strikes me that before very long they'll be opening a shop of their own, and right well they deserve to succeed too. It isn't many children of their age could or would support a whole family, and be so happy in their work too."
Though the days were short now, and the hours few when they could work out of doors, the fowl-house was built and tarred and roofed, and fitted with perches before a couple of weeks were past, for the man they called in to help them with the job had little else to do at that time of the year, and there was so little to be done in the garden, the boys were able to help a great deal; and never in their lives had they seen Aunt Emma so pleased as she was with the new fowl-house and run. 'My poultry farm,' she called it, and she was full of plans as to where the chickens were to be kept, and how they were to be fed, and the different kinds she was going to keep; but it is only fair to say that her greatest pleasure lay in the interest her brother took in it all.
The hens were soon installed in their new quarters, and every day the poor invalid collected the scraps of the house and chopped them up, and every night he put the pans of food in the oven to warm, and every day, unless the weather was very bad, he managed to creep out to give the fowls their food and drink, and to collect the eggs. He always washed and marked them and arranged them for market, so that they should look most tempting, putting all the dark brown ones together, and the light brown ones, and the creamy white ones.
"I don't see that there's any call to take all that trouble," Aunt Emma remarked, rather scornfully. "If people want eggs they'll buy them, no matter if they're clean or dirty, brown or white."
"But very often they don't feel that they want them until they see them looking clean and tempting," answered her brother quietly. "A dirty-looking egg will take away some folks' appetites, whereas a clean one will make them feel hungry. There was never anything but good done yet by taking a little trouble over things."
Aunt Emma looked unconvinced, but of one thing she could not help being convinced, and that was the good that the work and the interest of it were doing her brother. He no longer worried so cruelly at having to be idle; he felt less depressed, and, as he grew more cheerful, so he grew stronger, and by and by the pain he suffered lessened, and he was able to walk better and do more.
So the months wore away, and March came on them all too quickly, and with each week the work in the garden grew heavier.
"I do believe we shall have to have in a man to help us another year," sighed Bella, pausing in her digging, and seating herself on an upturned flower-pot for a rest.
Tom groaned. "And he'll cost more than he earns, most likely," he said soberly.
"Not if——" began Bella; but what she was going on to say was never said, and will never be known now, for at that moment Charlie burst through the gate and along the path in a great state of excitement.