Tillett lets little Tillett sleep with her cold nights," I murmured
drowsily.

"I don't believe it; no woman would undertake the responsibility of human
life like that," Bess answered as she tucked in a loose end of cover under
the pillow.

"Most of the world mothers sleep with their babies," Adam said when I told
him about little Tillett, "and--" I was answering when I trailed off into a
dream of walking a tight rope over a million white eggs. In the morning
Bess said she had dreamed that she was a steam roller trying to make a road
of eggs smooth enough to run her car over.

CHAPTER VII

Also Bess and I woke to find ourselves heroines. Matthew came to breakfast
after he had seen the lamps in his mock hens burning brightly, and brought
Polly with him to congratulate us on the rescue of our infant industry.
Polly had told him of our brilliant coup against old Jack Frost, and he was
all enthusiasm, as was also Uncle Cradd, while father beamed because he was
hearing me praised and thought of something else at the same time. Later
Owen Murray came out for Bess in his car, and insisted on buying six more
of the eggs, because, he said, they had now become a sporting proposition
and interested him. Bess agreed to board them to maturity in her
conservatory for him at fifty cents a day per head and let him visit them
at any time. He gave me a check immediately. He offered to buy six of
Polly's chicks at the same price, but Matthew refused to let her sell them
at all, and also Bess refused to have any mixing of breeds in her
conservatory. Polly didn't know enough to resent losing the hundred and
twenty dollars, because she had never had more than fifty cents in her
life, and Matthew didn't realize what it would have meant to her to have
that much money, because he had more than he needed all his life, so they
were all happy and laughed through one of Rufus' worst hog effusions in the
way of a meal for lunchers, but--but I had in a month learned to understand
what a dollar might mean to a man or woman, and at the thought of that two
hundred and forty dollars Mr. G. Bird and family had earned for me in their
second month of my ownership my courage arose and girded up its loins for
the long road ahead. I knew enough to know that these returns were a kind
of isolated nugget in the poultry business, and yet why not?

"We'll sell Mr. Evan Baldwin a five-hundred-dollar gold egg yet, Mr. G.
Bird," I said to myself.

After