FOR business reasons I had to take my holiday alone this year, after my wife and children had come back from Cornwall.
While I was away Peggy wrote to me and said that Evangeline, her favourite Minorca, had laid eleven eggs. Whereupon she, Evangeline, had become broody and refused to be comforted; so Peggy said she had added two eggs that Clara, one of the Cochins, had laid and was saving up, and put them under Evangeline, who had sat on the lot for the regulation period, the result being ten of the dearest little fluffy chickens you ever saw. My first reflection was that there they were, ten of them, eating the bread of idleness, and in war-time, I too, with so many other more useful mouths to fill.
But Peggy's last paragraph was consoling. She informed her father that she intended to collar some of the alien trade, and had made a good start with her ten chickens, in addition to the three Minorcas, five Cochins, and two Pedigree-unknowns, which were all laying eggs like anything. Another of the Cochins, Maud Eliza, was beginning to get broody, and was being trained for her sitting Marathon on a box of my best golf-balls, and altogether things looked rosy—from Peggy's point of view.
I replied by return of post that she was really trying to ruin a neutral Denmark, and that to compete with the hated foe she must induce Evangeline, Clara & Co. to turn their attention to laying sausages, the brass collars of electric-light bulbs, toys and small hardware; but, so as not to discourage her, I added that the chickens would make splendid table-decorations later on, and would keep down Williamson's absurd bills for meat.
I came home yesterday; and after tea Peggy presented me with a sheet of paper covered with figures—a set of multiplication sums in fact. There was a column for each of the hens and their possible offsprings, and the grand total, expressed in terms of chickens, was stupendous.
"What," she said, "is a chicken worth when it's ready to cook?"
"It depends," I said, "whether you are buying or selling it."
"Selling," she said.
"Oh; say 2s. 6d."
"Then to be on the safe side," she said, "we'll call it 2s. That makes twice 1,121 shillings. How much is that?"