At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [71]
“Dear Lord in heaven.” The voice of her husband boomed off the walls and rattled the china. Prissy stopped speaking. Then, following the big man’s lead, they all bowed their heads as he intoned, “We thank Thee for the bounty of this table and for the good hands that prepared it . . .”
Seats were found, and napkins were unfolded. Prissy was saying, “I just can’t tell you what a treat this is, to be in your lovely home and sitting down to such a lovely meal. Now, Noah, don’t you agree? You are such a lucky young man, aren’t you? And you look so handsome today, doesn’t he Stewart? Will you have a roll?”
Bridget was gently nudging Noah to straighten his posture when Lori burst through the swinging doors, flushed and a little breathless, juggling a long, flat box in her arms.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d already gone into dinner,” she said. “Hi, Reverend Holland, Mrs. Holland. I don’t mean to interrupt. That was Jonesie who just left. I asked him to, well, to drop something off.”
Lindsay’s smile was a little stiff. “Couldn’t it wait, Lori?”
Cici eyed the box with some trepidation. “What, exactly, did you ask Jonesie to drop off ?”
Lori beamed. “Your Easter surprise!”
As a corner of the box shifted in her arms, Lori dipped quickly to right it, unsettling the lid in the process. When an alarming scratching and chittering issued forth, Cici half rose from her chair.
“Lori, what on earth—”
But even as she spoke the box slipped further, tilting toward the floor. Then the lid slid off and a veritable ocean of tiny yellow cheeping balls of fluff spilled out.
“Chickens!” gasped Bridget.
Like a miniature yellow tide, baby chicks swarmed over the dining room floor, chirping and bobbing and darting this way and that. Prissy squealed as tiny claws scrambled over her feet. “Whoa! Call the Colonel!” Noah exclaimed, jumping to his feet. Ida Mae came through the swinging doors just then with a pitcher of iced tea, and a stream of chicks escaped into the kitchen before Cici could cry, “Ida Mae, the door!”
As Ida Mae disappeared behind the swinging doors and returned seconds later with a broom, Lori got down on her knees and tried to scoop the chicks back into the box, but they hopped out again as soon as she replaced them. Bridget tried to shoo them into the box with napkins while Ida Mae used the broom to block them from scurrying under the buffet, and Noah, enjoying himself, stuffed baby chicks into his pockets. The Reverend Holland, with his hands planted firmly on either side of his plate as though for security, clucked his tongue and murmured, “My, my,” while his wife, with her heels drawn up securely on the chair rung and her eyes big, said nothing at all. “For heaven’s sake, Lori, how many are there?” Cici exclaimed.
“A hundred and forty-four.” Lori stretched across the floor to scoop up an armful of cheeping fluff. She looked a little desperate. All three women stared at her, momentarily abandoning the reconnaissance effort. “A hundred and forty-four chickens?”
“You’re gonna need a bigger box,” Ida Mae said, flatly.
She thrust the broom into Cici’s hand and disappeared into the pantry.
Half an hour later, having tracked down baby chicks under the stove, behind the china cabinet, in the cabinets, and under the table, all were present and accounted for and safely contained inside a deep cardboard box from which they could not escape. Cici and Bridget helped Lori carry the box into the kitchen while Ida Mae stayed behind to pluck feathers from the dining room rug and Lindsay, pretending a savoir faire she could not possibly feel, tried to get Easter dinner back on track.
Cici collapsed into a ladder-back chair, and for the longest moment seemed incapable of doing anything but staring at her daughter. “A hundred and forty-four?” she said, again.
“There are two more boxes on the porch.”
“But . . . Lori!” Now it was Bridget’s turn to stare as she searched for words. “A hundred and forty-four! Chickens!”
“They were twelve dozen for a hundred dollars,” Lori said defensively. “We would have paid a lot