“Yes, Pussy, something breakable; I’ll give you three guesses. No? You give it up? Well, then, the boxes are full of eggs. Plymouth rocks, white leghorns, and buff cochins, each kind by itself. Not store eggs for cooking, with some ingredients missing, but hatching eggs that will turn into chickens; for it seems that they are quite different affairs, and Mr. Coates explained the whole matter to me so nicely.” (“How disgusting,” muttered Agatha.) “I find that he was brought up on a stock farm, and expects to have a model one of his own as soon as he and the Missus can settle upon a location.” “Marjory Kent, will you please remember who you are, and refrain from applying such a vulgar title to Mrs. Erastus Coates, whose mother was Martin Cortright’s aunt, and her father a Philadelphia Biddle? Suppose it reached her ears, do you think it would improve your prospects?” “Me? Oh, that’s not original; I was merely quoting the Head of the Firm, who called her ‘the Missus.’” “I thought that no one used hens, and that all you had to do was to buy a box full of eggs, called an incubator, and the lamp that goes with it did the rest,” said Pussy, wisely, for she sometimes read the advertisements in her brother’s sporting paper. “An incubator,” said Marjory, blind to the looks of boredom on the faces of her friends, “puts all the responsibility upon us, and unnecessary responsibility is what we are planning to avoid, for this summer at least. So as we have three very broad-chested, comfortable hens, who are simply ‘creaking’ with a desire to set, as Juno the cook puts it, we are going to supply them with good food and a nest of eggs apiece, and let them take the responsibility. “Do we care to raise poultry and things? We don’t know; who was it that said, ‘We know what we are but not what we may be’?” “Juliet,” cried Pussy. “No, Ophelia,” said Agatha; “you might know that in Marjory’s present state of mind she would only quote a mad woman!” “Whichever it is, that is our present condition, for we may develop a liking for anything simple! So we shall try chickens and see, and that’s another thing that we’re going to do this summer,—try to find out what we really like to do. Billy says that the best beginning is to do nothing that we are sure we dislike.” (“And lose all your friends in the process,” growled Agatha.) “That sounds comfy, but meanwhile aren’t you going to fix up your house, and ask us all out there by nicely chosen twos or fours?” pleaded Pussy. “Surely all this stuff about no maids and the simple life that Agatha has been telling us isn’t true; you will have tables and chairs and beds, and not expect us to sleep on the matting, with our heads on blocks, like the Japs?”