and told Vera that a visiting schoolteacher had already asked whether the new blue eggs were as good as rumored. Vera corrected the phrase as gently as she could: blue-white shells did not make the contents magically healthier, and the rich yolks might owe as much to diet as to inheritance. Martha smiled and said that honesty would make a better sales pitch than anything Vera had been tempted to exaggerate.
By the following Saturday, Martha had sold every carton and taken orders for the next two deliveries. A doctor's wife wanted a dozen for a dinner party, a boardinghouse keeper wanted six for guests, and a woman who had grown tired of ordinary eggs wanted one carton simply to see whether the stories were true. Vera listened to the names and wrote them down as if they were creditors rather than customers. Each represented an expectation she would have to satisfy again next week, and promises frightened her more than compliments. She had known too many farms that grew because of one enthusiastic buyer and faltered when that buyer changed her mind.
Martha offered to pay a little more if Vera could supply enough to keep the shelf full. Vera declined until she knew the flock's reliable production through autumn. She also explained that she was saving some eggs for hatching, which would temporarily reduce the number she could deliver. Martha considered this, then nodded and advised her to tell the customers the truth before they began imagining she was hiding eggs to force up the price. It was a practical piece of advice, and Vera recognized it as the kind of wisdom people learned only by making mistakes with other people's patience.
Word reached the county by the end of August, and Daniel appeared at the north fence on Thursday with his hat in one hand. Vera was hanging washed feed pans on nails to dry when he called her name. She walked across the yard expecting to hear that another neighbor had made a joke about blue eggs and poor judgment. Instead, Daniel looked past her toward the run where the twelve silver birds moved in a patch of afternoon sunshine.
"Martha says she's paying you thirty cents a dozen," he said.
"She is."
"Thirty cents?"
"That's the figure she gave me."
He was quiet, searching for something to say that did not sound foolish. Vera could see him revising an opinion, and she almost felt sorry for him. He had worried about her in March, and he had been wrong about the birds, but she knew he had hoped for their success even while expecting disappointment. His concern had never been an attempt to make her feel small, though it had sometimes accomplished that without meaning to.
"The chicks," he said finally.
"Yes."
"The six dollars."