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.”
