"Wentworth-AsYouSow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

"Eat!" Horrified, Ungern snatched the panicked chick from her. He turned it
right side up and cradled it against his chest where he could feel its heart
thumping like a runaway horse.

"Well, of course, eat." Sonya crossed her arms across her ample bosom. "It's
obvious they can't sing, and they're certainly not good to look at. What else
can we do with them?"

"They're just babies!" Lowering his head, he cuddled the terrified chick against
his cheek. "You can't eat them."

"I'm certainly not going to feed the wretched things." She jerked aside as a
chick tottered close to her skirt. "And don't let me catch you giving them the
chickens' corn either." She brushed her hands off and turned sharply around,
heading for the cottage at a ground-eating pace that boded trouble.

"Never mind, "Ungern whispered to the bird in his arms. He watched a wading
chick pull its beak out from under the shallow water, dripping with weeds and
mud. "You wouldn't like com anyway."

Over the following weeks, Sonya scolded him about his poor hatchlings every
morning when he went out to the fields, and every night when he returned. Until
he got rid of those stupid-looking things, she said, he would never have a
moment's peace.

And so-- his dinner was burned, his clothes unwashed, and his bed most decidedly
cold.

But Ungern decided he hadn't known the true meaning of misery until his two
strapping brothers found out about his birds.

"I swear, Kaarel, those things had legs as long as a woman's!" Jaan, the oldest,
yellow-haired and broad-shouldered, grinned as he hitched up a drowsing brown
ox. "And thin as sticks!"

His younger brother, Kaarel, who towered above him by almost a head, paused in
the middle of loading the cart with flax bound for the lord's storehouse. His
broad face puckered with the effort of thought. "It doesn't sound as though
there'd be much meat on the drumsticks."

"They're not for eating." Ungern didn't look up from the farm cart's balky rear
wheel. "Shut up and hand me that grease."

"If you're not going to eat them, then why did you plant them?" Kaarel passed
him the tin of axle grease, then squatted down beside him in the wagon ruts.

"Not everything in this world has to be practical, Kaarel." Ungern pried the lid
off and scooped up a fingerful of strong-smelling black grease for the squeaky
wheel. "Some things are just good to look at." A faint smile twitched at his
lips. "You should see them when they fly. Up in the air, they look just like