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 2_s._ 6_d._"
"Then to be on the safe side," she said, "we'll call it 2_s._ That
makes twice 1,121 shillings. How much is that?"
I found a stump of pencil, and an empty corner of _The History of the
War_, and worked it out. "£112 2_s._ 0_d._," I said at last.
"Not so bad, Daddy, in twelve months."
"Marvellous!" I said; "colossal! But you haven't allowed for the
chickens we shall eat."
"No," she said, "but we shall save 2_s._ on each one we eat, so it's the
same thing in the end."