R

IGHT after dinner I'd taken the clippers and set to work on the box-hedge around our dooryard. June is a busy time on a truck-farm, but that hedge had been the pride of Pa's life. When Pa died that left just my brother Pete and me at the old place, and Pete didn't hold with clipping hedges or planting flower-beds or cutting the lawn. So those things usually fell to me to do.

I'd clipped just from the corner to the gate when Jim McAulay came along. Jim had bought the eighty acres south of us on the shore of Lake Michigan; he was one of those city fellows who didn't feel like going back to a city job after the war. He lived alone, with nobody to do for him in the house or around the place, but he always seemed to have plenty of time to go visiting his neighbors. I suppose he got lone some being by himself all the time. Anyhow an Irishman always likes somebody to talk to.

"We need rain, don't we?" said Jim. He took the clippers out of my hand. "Let me cut this for you. You sit in the shade and rest awhile." "Oh," I said, "I'll get the other pair of clippers and work along with you." Jim grinned. He was a red-haired fellow with big freckles, but when

"These beds in the dooryard are always a good deal the same. I try my experiments out where the neighbors can't see 'em. Pete says I'd plant the whole farm to flowers if he'd let me. But even Pete can't deny I've got the nicest field of straw-flowers in Wisconsin."

"Straw-flowers?" repeated Jim. "What's the connection between straw and flowers?"

I laughed. "Straw-flowers are what they call those flowers you dry to use in bouquets that will last all winter. Last year I took five hundred bunches down to the State Fair at Milwaukee and sold 'em for a quarter a bunch. I could have sold more if I'd had 'em. This year I'm going to have more."

"Your flowers make you a lot of extra work," said Jim, setting the clippers going at last. Jim was the kind of fellow that thinks he's hoeing when he has a hoe in his hand.

"They do. But there's nothing I like so much as to see things growing and know it was I made 'em grow."

"Well, if that's your idea of farming!" said a voice close behind us.

Jim and I both jumped. Pete had

come out of the house with his pipe in his hand, and we hadn't heard him cross the grass. I'd given him a good dinner, steak and fresh asparagus, which could be cooked on the oilstove, and pie left from the day be fore when I'd had the range going. Pete has a round face and curly light hair and blue eyes, and he's generally supposed to look like me. But I hope I don't look the way he did that minute. To see me at the hedge was always to Pete like a red rag to a bull.

"You make the same mistake lots of city folks make," Pete went on. "You think a farm is a nice place to loaf around in summer. It ain't. A farm is a business, same as any other business."

"I'm not city folks," said Jim. "I own eighty acres to your forty." "But your place is terrible run down."

"Lord, yes!" said Jim. "The "The soil is nothing but sand. The roof of the house leaks, and you can see daylight through the cracks in the barn. But right at the head of the bluff I've got the most beautiful elm-tree in Wisconsin. And when you say the most beautiful elm in Wisconsin, that's the same as saying the most beautiful in the world. I can sit in its shade and smoke and watch the steamers on Lake Michigan. I guess that alone is worth the price of eighty acres."

"Well of all the damn fool talk!" says Pete. "You paid cash for that farm too, didn't you?"

"Sure. Sunk all my savings in it." "Well if I had money to buy a farm, you wouldn't catch me buying here on the lake shore. I'd go southwest into Walworth County, where

the soil is rich and the spring winds are warm."

"Walworth County?" says Jim. "Why, Walworth County is nothing but prairie. Not a hill or a lake to bless your eyes with."

Pete's face got red as fire, and he was so mad he shouted. “Is a farm a farm, or is it scenery?"

Just at that minute a big car stopped in the road right outside where we were standing. It was all painted green, with yellow wire wheels, and had a little silver statue on the radiator. Inside it were five ladies dressed in soft felt hats and bright clothes. One of them was smoking a cigarette. As plain as print, that car said "City." It said "Money" too.

The lady behind the wheel had black hair cut so that the two ends were brought around on her cheeks, and made her face sort of heart shaped. She was very young, but on her hand I noticed one of these platinum wedding-rings set all the way around with diamonds. She leaned out and spoke to us. "May we drive through your farm and go down to the lake shore? We want to picnic on the beach."

"I don't allow fires on my place," said Pete. "Nor smoking neither. It may lead to fires."

The lady with the cigarette threw it away and smiled at me. But the one who was driving said, "I'm not asking any favors. I'll be glad to pay for the use of your beach."

"A farm ain't a picnic ground," said Pete. But he went and opened the gate into the barnyard.

I spoke up then. "If you want to go swimming, you can dress in the house. My kitchen floor is scrubbed

22

The city folks left their car in the barnyard, and I walked to the bluff to point out the way to them. They admired the orchard and the little house where Pa and Ma first lived when they came on the farm. We used it now for tools and seeds. They spoke of the beehives, and the cold frames behind the barn, where I always put in some flower-seeds after the tomato and cabbage and egg-plants are out of them. They all exclaimed at once when they saw my rows and rows of straw-flowers. But they didn't say a word about Pete's nice fields of vegetables.

When I'd showed the ladies the path over the edge of the bluff I went back to the hedge. Jim was clipping away, and Pete was smoking and scowling. He growled at me, "If you've loafed long enough, Anna, you might help me with the vegetables that go into Milwaukee on the load to-morrow."

I didn't like Jim to hear Pete speak to me that way. But Jim just grinned and said, "You go right along, Anna. I'll finish the hedge for you."

"Ain't you got a load to take in town yourself, Jim McAulay?" growled Pete.

It took a lot of time to get everything just so, but Pa always said it paid in the end. Anyhow I liked the smell of vegetables just fresh from the earth, and the feel of 'em in my hands. Every once in a while I'd stop work for a minute and look back at the orchard and the beehives, or ahead at the house, with morning-glories trained over the back stoop, and the grass in the dooryard like green velvet.

Jim McAulay finished half the hedge. Then he laid down the clippers and came back to the tubs near the windmill. "Anna," he said, “I hate to see you work so hard."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Hint number one," said Jim. He rolled up his sleeves. "I'll wash and you bunch."

Pete came up with a cutting of asparagus and scowled at Jim, “Are you getting that lettuce clean?"

"It can go into the cleanest sink in Milwaukee and not leave a trace of dirt," said Jim. "I'm a good worker when I get started. All I need is some one to tell me what to do."

Pete sniffed. He wasn't a bit backward about letting Jim know he thought he was lazy. But Jim stuck to it like a good fellow until the

asparagus and young onions and radishes were all bunched, and the spinach and lettuce and early cabbage laid in baskets.

Then I said, "I'm going to light the range and make biscuits, Jim. Won't you stay and have supper with us?"

"After the bachelor's biscuits I make myself, you don't have to ask me twice," said Jim.

I always think supper is the pleasantest meal of the day. After I got the fire started and the biscuits in the oven I had time to get a good wash and put on a clean gingham dress. Besides the biscuits I had lettuce and ham and eggs and a big pot of tea. When Pete and I were alone we never said much at the table. But Jim McAulay was awful good company, always coming off with funny cracks. He wiped the dishes for me, too, so's I could sit with him and Pete on the front porch.

Jim started his pipe. "I'll have to smoke to keep off mosquitoes. Another year if I'm still farming I'm going to screen the porch at my place."

"They've all got screened porches on the farms over in Walworth County," said Pete. "With their good soil and warm winds, they can harvest their stuff while I'm still planting mine. Of course they're farther from the markets, but now that everybody has an auto-truck that don't matter."

Jim went on smoking. "What's the good of a screened porch if there's nothing to look at when you sit on it?"

"Oh, you make me sick, always wanting to look at something!" says Pete.

I laid my hand on Jim's knee. I didn't want him arguing with Pete and stirring him all up. But just at that minute the five city ladies came back from the beach and climbed into their car. "We've enjoyed your picnic grounds!" the one who had smoked called out to me.

Pete went to open the barnyard gate, and the lady behind the wheel beckoned to him. I saw her hand him a bill. After he'd put it in his pocket she talked to him for quite a long time. Then all at once she got out of the car, and Pete began to show her the place.

Jim and I sat on the porch, and I heard them going through the house. It wasn't like Pete to be so hospitable, and I thought maybe I ought to join them. But it was kind of nice sitting there with Jim, so I didn't go in even when he took her upstairs. After they came down I heard her say, "Yes, it would work over charmingly."

Pete went out to the car with her, and she fished around and got out her check-book. I thought it was queer when she handed him a check, because she'd already paid him for the use of the beach.

But after the car drove away Pete brought the check and showed it to Jim. "Phew!" said Jim. "Just like that! City people don't care what they do with their money. What's she giving you all that much for?"

"To bind the bargain," says Pete, stiff and solemn-like.

"What bargain?" asked Jim. "The sale of this farm. They want to buy it for a summer residence."

"But Pete," I cried, "you're not going to sell it to 'em?"

"It's sold," says Pete. "This binds the bargain."

I thought at first he meant it for a joke. But Jim passed the check over to me. It was for five hundred dollars. When I saw that I began to cry.

The next morning Pete drove off to Milwaukee, and as usual he came back with his truck empty. The same grocers Pa had sold to were still buying from us. But it seems Pete had also gone to see the woman's husband. Swift their name

was.

"But it's my farm. Pa left it to me."

"I know. But Pa never thought you'd turn me off it. He'd had this farm ever since he came over from Germany as a boy. He and Ma set up housekeeping in the little house back in the orchard. When he built this house, I remember him saying he was building it for his grandchildren."

"Sentiment is for city folks. They can afford it," says Pete. "They're paying me twice what my forty acres are worth. I'm going to take the money and buy me a real farm over in Walworth County. Farming's hard work. A man's a fool not to get all he can out of it."

He went stalking off to see that everything was snug for the night in the barn and the hen-house. Jim tried to comfort me by saying, "The sale may not go through. That woman's husband is likely to have something to say about the way she throws money around. Even city folks don't buy a farm the way you'd buy a pound of ham. The more money they have the more careful they are with it."

By the time Jim left I was feeling a little better. Anyhow when I came to think it over I didn't believe Pete would sell in June no matter how much they paid him. He'd want to get the money out of his crops first.

Sunday morning I went to church as usual. I could have gone into Milwaukee on the Interurban electric, but instead I walked down the road to the little church where Pa and Ma were married. I liked it better anyhow. On a summer Sunday when the windows were open I could hear the birds all during the sermon, and sometimes bees and butterflies would come in. It was the country, and yet it was church too.

When I got home Pete was sitting on the porch in his Sunday clothes. "Want me to hurry up dinner, in case Mr. Swift should come out?" I asked.

"Oh, he's already been!"

"I hope he didn't like the place," I said sharp enough.

"He liked it. They're buying it. I can stay on the farm until October. But it's theirs from now on."

I felt my head go light, the same as it did once when I had the grippe. "You sold this place without saying a word to me!"

"It's my place to do with as I like."

"Well, I'm not yours to do with as you like. Pa never would have let you turn me out of my own home. This is where you and I quit."

"Pshaw! There's nothing to be so upset about," says Pete. "We'll have a much better farm in Wal