Martha lifted one into the light, rolled it gently between her fingers, and let the morning sun show the pale color of the shell. She weighed it in her hand with an expertise that made Vera trust her even before she spoke. Then Martha fetched the little bowl she kept for inspecting a supplier's eggs and cracked one open. The yolk held high and amber against the white.
"Lord," Martha said.
"That's what I thought," Vera replied.
"How many hens have you got?"
"Twelve."
"And what are they giving you?"
"Ten or eleven a day right now. Not every day, but often enough that I've started keeping separate figures."
Martha studied the bowl again, then looked at Vera with an expression she normally reserved for a customer who had brought in something unexpectedly valuable. "I'll take every dozen you can supply, if they keep this quality. Thirty cents."
Vera knew the ordinary market price was fourteen cents a dozen. She had rehearsed asking for twenty, perhaps twenty-two if Martha seemed impressed. Thirty cents made her forget the next sentence she had prepared, and she had to fold her hands around the edge of the basket to keep from appearing startled. "I'll need a week to collect enough for a proper delivery," she said.
"Then I'll see you next Monday," Martha answered. "And don't let anyone talk you into lowering the price before I've had my customers try them."
Outside Martha's store, Vera sat behind the steering wheel without starting the engine. She listened to the street, to a wagon approaching along the square, and to the bell above the shop door as another customer went inside. Thirty cents a dozen was more than twice what ordinary eggs fetched, but she could still hear her father's voice warning her not to confuse a good price with a good business. Twelve hens laying ten eggs a day made roughly seventy eggs in a week, just under six dozen after the occasional broken shell or egg she kept for the kitchen. Six dozen at thirty cents meant about a dollar and eighty cents gross, before feed and cartons and fuel took their share.
It was a small number when measured against debt, land, or the cost of a new barn. It was an extraordinary number when measured against the fact that the birds had been six dollars of uncertain promise in a crate. Vera wrote the calculation on the back of Martha's receipt and added a second column showing what the income might become with forty hens, then a hundred. She was careful not to count eggs that did not yet exist or customers she had not met. Even so, the page began to look less like a record of scarcity and more like a possible plan.
Her first weekly delivery was five and a half dozen because one egg had broken in the nest and she had set two aside for the kitchen. Martha did not complain about the short quantity. She arranged the pale eggs in clean cartons, placed a handwritten notice beside the register,