"You said that before!"
"Well, they sat before—and after," said Norah, unmoved. "Two of them brought their eggs out, beautiful clutches, twelve in one and thirteen in the other. Such luck! I used to be like the old woman who pinched herself and asked, 'Be this I?' They all lived in a fox-proof yard—fence eight feet high with wire-netting on top. I wasn't leaving anything to chance about those chicks."
"Was it cholera? Or pip?"
"Neither," said Norah. "They were the very healthiest, all of them. The chickens grew and flourished, and when they were about a week old, the other six hens were all about to bring out theirs within two days. Oh, Wally, I was so excited! I used to go down to the yard about a dozen times a day, just to gloat!"
"Never gloat too soon," said Wally. "It's a hideous risk!"
"I'm never going to gloat again at all, I think," said Norah, mournfully. The recital of her woes was painful. "So I went down one morning, and found them all happy and peaceful; the six old ladies sitting in their boxes, and the two proud mammas with their chicks, scratching round the yard and chasing grasshoppers. It was," said Norah, in the approved manner of story-tellers, "a fair and joyous scene!"
"'Specially for the grasshoppers!" commented her hearer. "And then—?"
"Then I went out for a ride with Dad, and I didn't get back until late in the afternoon. I let Bobs go, and ran down to the fowl yard without waiting to change my habit." Norah paused. "I really don't know that I can bring myself to tell you any more!"
"If you don't," said Wally, indignantly, "there'll certainly be bloodshed. Go on at once—
"Am I a man on human plan
Designed, or am I not, Matilda?"