She throws on her cloak and picks up the basket near the door on her way out to the coop before starting with the mopping. No more than half a dozen chickens to start, he'd said, and she finds that number more than manageable. She'd named them, not that anyone would care that Aurora was the speckled one and Jasmine was the white one—as long as they produced their eggs, none would care. She feels heavy snowflakes fall on her cloak and sets the basket down to pull the hood over her head.
Bustling back into the house, she looks back out at the coop. Sighing, she steps around the mop and bucket and goes back out, avoiding little puddles of mud here and there, and pushes the coop towards the door.
"Rest easy, girls," she says. "And Arthur. No one will freeze to death. You'll see."
She scrambles inside, turns, and takes hold of the other side of the coop and pulls. It's harder now, squeezing it through the door. The clucking sounds more irritated than usual. Goodness, that's not clucking, she realizes. That's squawking!
"Quiet! I'll get you in and we'll discuss the details later." Heaving, she bends down once again and tries to hoist more of it in.
"Belle..."
"Oh! It, it started snowing and I couldn't let them stay out there and freeze, so I was..."
With a wave of his hand, the doorway widens and the coop comes all the way inside. As if on cue, the chickens totter out, heads bobbing, scouting their new terrain. Her mouth rounds as her mind tries in vain to say something.
"Is there something you'd like to say?" he asks.
"Thank you."
"Something else, perhaps? Some sort of regret that's been lingering? That maybe you were in over your head?"
"Oh, no, I've got this." She nods for emphasis. "They just need to stay warm. We might get more eggs this way. Minnie!" she hisses. The reddish brown one was pecking right around his boots.
"You named them?"
Belle kneels, holds out her arms, and Minnie comes back to her as casually as a chicken possibly could.
"I was just about to take the eggs to the kitchen before I started mopping." Attempting to stand with a chicken in one's arms takes the grace taught in countless lessons since childhood. With a nervous laugh, she all but stuffs Minnie back into the coop. "Right. Off I go then?"
He's rendered speechless, and yet Belle does not consider it a victory.