Vera also hired help for the first time since her father's death. A seventeen-year-old named Ben Sutter had been looking for work after his family's wheat crop failed, and she offered him two mornings a week cleaning the older pens and carrying feed. The wage was modest, the hours regular, and the arrangement written on a page both of them signed. Ben seemed surprised that she wanted a record for such a small job, but Vera explained that proper accounts protected a worker as much as they protected an employer. She had seen too many people promised payment by a handshake and given excuses when the promised day arrived.
Ben learned quickly, though the silver birds made him uneasy at first. He said they looked as though someone had washed the ordinary color out of them, and Vera told him appearance was the least important quality they possessed. She showed him how to read the leg bands, how to record feed usage, and why a bird that appeared lively in the morning could still be in difficulty by evening. He began carrying a pencil of his own, writing down questions rather than waiting for someone to criticize what he did not yet know. Vera discovered that teaching him helped her explain to herself the methods she had developed by necessity.
The first daughters from the autumn hatch approached laying age in March, and Vera watched them with greater suspense than she had felt awaiting the first egg from the original twelve. The mothers had already proven they could give a good product; the daughters would show whether the venture might continue beyond one fortunate purchase. She checked the nest boxes several times a day and pretended each visit was part of the ordinary feeding schedule. Daniel knew better, but he was wise enough not to comment. He came by one afternoon with a repaired gate latch and found her standing perfectly still before an occupied nest.
When the young hen rose, there was an egg beneath her, pale blue-white and slightly smaller than those from the original flock. Vera picked it up, weighed it, and examined the shell before recording a word. The size was not extraordinary yet, but she knew first eggs often differed from later ones, and she refused to rush to a conclusion. During the next weeks, other daughters began laying, and the notebook filled with new columns comparing their production, growth, shell qualities, and feed consumption with the original flock. Some did not meet her expectations. Others came closer than she had dared to hope.
At the end of April she wrote a summary for Professor Whitfield, making a separate page of every trait that had failed to reproduce consistently. She reported the ordinary-colored birds, the uneven laying rates, and the differences in egg size without attempting to hide them beneath averages. The professor replied