One of Ours - Willa Cather [74]
"I'm afraid not. Mother wouldn't like it. We never have done that, even when we were crowded."
"Well, I think I'll go over and have a talk with your mother. If she could look inside my wheat shocks, maybe I could convince her it's pretty near a case of your neighbour's ox falling into a pit on the Sabbath day."
"That's a good idea. She's always reasonable."
Leonard rose. "What's the news?"
"The Germans have torpedoed an English passenger ship, the Arabic; coming this way, too."
"That's all right," Leonard declared. "Maybe Americans will stay at home now, and mind their own business. I don't care how they chew each other up over there, not a bit! I'd as soon one got wiped off the map as another."
"Your grandparents were English people, weren't they?"
"That's a long while ago. Yes, my grandmother wore a cap and little white curls, and I tell Susie I wouldn't mind if the baby turned out to have my grandmother's skin. She had the finest complexion I ever saw."
As they stepped out of the back door, a troop of white chickens with red combs ran squawking toward them. It was the hour at which the poultry was usually fed. Leonard stopped to admire them. "You've got a fine lot of hens. I always did like white leghorns. Where are all your roosters?"
"We've only got one. He's shut up in the coop. The brood hens are setting. Enid is going to try raising winter frys."
"Only one rooster? And may I ask what these hens do?"
Claude laughed. "They lay eggs, just the same,--better. it's the fertile eggs that spoil in warm weather."
This information seemed to make Leonard angry. "I never heard of such damned nonsense," he blustered. "I raise chickens on a natural basis, or I don't raise 'em at all." He jumped into his car for fear he would say more.
When he got home his wife was lifting supper, and the baby sat near her in its buggy, playing with a rattle. Dirty and sweaty as he was, Leonard picked up the clean baby and began to kiss it and smell it, rubbing his stubbly chin in the soft creases of its neck. The little girl was beside herself with delight.
"Go and wash up for supper, Len," Susie called from the stove. He put down the baby and began splashing in the tin basin, talking with his eyes shut.
"Susie, I'm in an awful temper. I can't stand that damned wife of Claude's !"
She was spearing roasting ears out of a big iron pot and looked up through the steam. "Why, have you seen her? I was listening on the telephone this morning and heard her tell Bayliss she would be in town until late." "Oh, yes! She went to town all right, and he's over there eating a cold supper by himself. That woman's a fanatic. She ain't content with practising prohibition on humankind; she's begun now on the hens." While he placed the chairs and wheeled the baby up to the table, he explained Enid's method of raising poultry to his wife. She said she really didn't see any harm in it.
"Now be honest, Susie; did you ever know hens would keep on laying without a rooster?"
"No, I didn't, but I was brought up the old-fashioned way. Enid has poultry books and garden books, and all such things. I don't doubt she gets good ideas from them. But anyhow, you be careful. She's our nearest neighbour, and I don't want to have trouble with her."
"I'll have to keep out of her way, then. If she tries to do any missionary work among my chickens, I'll tell her a few home truths her husband's too bashful to tell her. It's my opinion she's got that boy cowed already."
"Now, Len, you know she won't bother your chickens. You keep quiet. But Claude does seem to sort of avoid people," Susie admitted, filling her husband's plate again. "Mrs. Joe Havel says Ernest don't go to Claude's any more. It seems Enid went over there and wanted Ernest to paste some Prohibition posters about fifteen million drunkards on their barn, for an example to the Bohemians. Ernest wouldn't