"What's all this mean?" said Chi, somewhat astonished, for he had not known why the meeting had been called.
"Why, you see, Chi, we never knew till then that the farm had been mortgaged on account of father's sickness, and that it had been so awful hard for mother all this year--"
Chi cleared his throat.
"--And we want to do something to help earn. If we could earn just our own clothes and books and enough to pay for our schooling, it would be something."
"Guess 't would," said Chi, clearing his throat again. "Kind of workin' out the third by-law, ain't you?"
"Trying to," answered March, with such sincerity in his voice that Chi's throat troubled him for full a minute. "And what I want to find out, without mother's knowing it, or father either, is how we can earn enough for those things. If anybody 's got anything to say, just speak up."
"What you goin' to do with those Wyandottes?"
"I knew you 'd ask that, Chi. I 'm going to raise a fine breed and sell the eggs at a dollar and a half for thirteen; but I can't get any chicken-money till next fall, and no egg-money till next spring, and I want to begin now."
"Hm--" said Chi, taking off his straw hat and slowly scratching his head. "Well," he said after a pause in which all were thinking and no one talking, "why don't all of you go to work raisin' chickens for next Thanksgivin'?"
"By cracky!" said Budd, "we could raise three or four hundred, an' fat 'em up, an' make a pile, easy as nothing."