GETTING IN THE EARLY CROPS
Mother Atterson had breakfast the next morning by lamplight, because the truckman wanted to make an early start.
Hiram had already begun early rising, however, for the farmer who does not get up before the sun in the spring needs must do his chores at night by lantern-light. The eight-hour law can never be a rule on the farm.
But Sister was up, too, and out of the house, running as wild as a rabbit. Hiram caught her in the barnyard trying to clamber on the cow's back to ride her about the enclosure. Sister was afraid of nothing that lived and walked, having all the courage of ignorance.
She found that she could not in safety clamber over the pig-lot fence and catch one of the shoats. Old Mother Hog ran at her with open mouth and Sister came back from that expedition with a torn frock and some new experience.
"I never knew anything so fat could run," she confided to Hiram. "Old Missus Poundly, who lived on our block, and weighed three hundred pounds, couldn't run, I bet!"Mr. Camp was not disturbed by Mrs. Atterson, but was allowed to sleep as long as he liked, while she kept a little breakfast hot for him and the coffeepot on the back of the stove.
The old lady became interested at once in all Hiram had done toward beginning the spring work. She learned about the seed in the window boxes (some of them were already breaking the soil) about watering them and covering them properly and immediately took those duties off Hiram's hands.
"If Sister an' me can't do the light chores around this place and leave you to 'tend to the bigger things, then we ain't no good and had better go back to the boarding house," she announced.
"Oh, Mis' Atterson! You wouldn't go back to town, would you?" pleaded Sister. "Why, there's real hens--and a cow that will give milk bimeby, Hi says--and a horse that wiggles his ears and talks right out loud when he's hungry, for I heard him--and pigs that squeal and run, an' they'rejest as fat as butter---"
"Well, to stay here we've all got to work, Sister," declared her mistress. "So get at them dishes now and be quick about it. There's forty times more chores to do here than there was back in Crawberry--But, thanks be! there ain't no gravy to worry about.""And there ain't no boarders to make fun of me," said Sister, thoughtfully. Then, she announced, after some rumination: "I like pigs better than I do boarders Mis' Atterson.""Well, I should think you would!" exclaimed that lady, tartly. "Pigs has got some sense."Hiram laughed at this. "You'll find the pigs demanding gravy, just the same--and very urgent about it they are, too," he told them.
But he was glad to give the small chores over into their hands, and went to work immediately to prepare for putting in the early crops.
He had already cleared the rubbish off the piece of ground selected for the garden, and had burned it. He hauled out stable manure from the barnyard and gave an acre and a half of this piece of land a good dressing.
The other half-acre was for early potatoes, and he wished to put the manure in the furrow for them, so did not top dress that strip of land. The frost was pretty well out of the ground by now; but even if some remained, plowing this high, well-drained piece would do no harm. Beside, Hiram was eager to get in early crops.
It was a still, hazy morning when he geared the old horse to the plow and headed him into the garden piece. He had determined to plow the entire plot at once, and instead of plowing "around and around" had paced off his lands and started in the middle, plowing "gee" instead of "haw".
This system is a bit more particular, and hard for the careless plowman; but it overcomes that unsightly "dead-furrow" in the middle of a field and brings the "finishing-furrow" on the edge. This insures better surface drainage and is a more scientific method of tillage.
The plow was rusty and the point was not in the very best condition; but after the first few rounds the share was cleaned off, and it began to slip through the moist earth and roll it over in a long, brown ribbon behind him.
Hiram Strong clung to the plow handles, a rope-rein in each hand, and watched the plow and the horse and the land ahead with an eye as keen as that of a river-pilot.
As the strip of turned earth grew wider and longer Sister ran out to see him work. She watched the plow turn the mulch into the furrow and lay the brown, greasy mold upon it, with wide-open eyes.
"Why!" cried she," wouldn't it be nice if we could go right along with a plow and bury our past like that--cover everything mean and nasty up, and forget it! That institution they put me in--and the old woman I lived with before that, who drank so much gin and beat me--and the boarders-- and that boy who used to pull my braids whenever he met me-- My that would be fine!""I reckon that is what Life does do for us," returned Hiram, thoughtfully, stopping at the end of the furrow to mop his brow and let the old horse breathe. "Yes, sir! Life plows all the experience under, and it ought to enrich our future existence, just as this stuff I'm plowing under here will decay and enrich the soil."But the plow don't turn it quite under in spots," said Sister, with a sigh. "Leastways, I can't help remembering the bad things once in a while."There were certain other individuals who found out very soon that Hiram was plowing, too. Those were the hens. There were not more than fifteen or twenty of the scrubby creatures, and they began to follow the plow and pick up grubs and worms.
"I tell you one thing that I've got to do before we put in much," Hiram told the ex-boarding house mistress at noon.
