Brooke could not conceal her satisfaction at the fact that some breakfast had been stored away for her in the “hot closet,” and the mere fact placated Miss Keith more than a thousand apologies for oversleeping. Why is it that people, women especially, feel it a special point of virtue to suppress or deny the existence of natural appetites that to be truly without would prove them abnormal?
When both Mrs. Lawton and Brooke had duly learned where every dish, pot, and pan belonged, and had seen the empty closet with its shelves edged with scalloped paper that had been prepared for the china they had brought,—one complete set, a Christmas present from Mr. Dean a few years before, having been retained,—Mrs. Lawton returned to her husband, and Brooke cornered Miss Keith for the necessary business conversation which, though inevitable, the older woman for some reason was seemingly trying to avoid.
“In a minute I’ll be there, and we’ll have it all out,” she said, rushing out the back door toward the chicken houses with a dish-pan of scraps that she had deftly made into a sort of stew, while she talked, by the addition of some corn meal, red pepper, and hot water, returning in a very few minutes with the empty receptacle.
“That reminds me, Brooke, it’s best the next three months to feed them their hot meal in the morning, and not to let them out to exercise before eleven, and shut them up tight, sharp at three, even on clear days. If you don’t, they get so cold it sort of discourages the eggs at the time you most want them. I’ve made out a list of my steady customers, and put it here in the drawer along with the farm book, in case you have enough eggs to peddle, and mind! forty cents a dozen is my steady price from December to March. Don’t let ’em cheat you. After March you must follow market rates. The farm book tells just what I plant, and when, and what I naturally expect to get back. You see the place has run itself fairly well, hired man and all, though you won’t expect it to now, because you’ll need eggs to eat, and pretty much all the milk and butter output, while your father’s on slop food.
“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll tend the fowls yourself, and don’t trust the hired help. And I don’t think you’d best start the incubator this year,—you’ll have enough on your hands. There are eight or ten hens that have been working overtime this winter, so I expect they will be thankful to rest their legs, and set the first week in March. By the way, there’s spring latches on the doors of the roosting and laying houses,—my idea to trap light-fingered folk if they get in, and to keep the fowls from straying. Best be careful not to get shut in without the keys (they lie in the box by the clock with all the others, plainly labelled). What money there is to be had from poultry in these parts comes from caring for it yourself, and you can’t trust hired female help, ’specially when it comes from the city.”