Part 61 (1/2)

”Which?” queried Sol, perking his head in puzzled and impertinent way, very much as the rooster had done a little while before him.

”Next spring, I said,” she repeated, nodding over her bonnet, into which she was slipping the splints.

”No crop this year?”

”No; Joe says it weakens the plants to bear the first year they're set.

It takes the strength away from the roots, he says. He goes through the field and snips off every bloom he sees when he's hoein' among 'em, and I help him between times. We don't git all of 'em, by a mighty sight, though.”

Sol shook his head with wise depreciation.

”Throwin' away money,” said he.

”Did you ever raise any strawberries?” she inquired, putting down the bonnet, bringing Sol up with a sharp look.

”Reckon I raised as many as Joe ever did, and them mainly with a spoon,”

said Sol.

The joke was not entirely new; it could not have been original with Sol by at least three hundred years. But it did very well as an excuse for Sol to laugh. He was always looking for excuses to laugh, that was the one virtue in him. Without his big laugh he would have been an empty sack without a bottom.

”Joe got them rows mighty purty and straight,” said Sol, squinting along the apple trees.

”Yes, he set 'em out accordin' to geog'aphy,” said she.

”Which?” said Sol.

”Ge-og'a-phy, I said. Didn't you never hear tell of that before neither, Sol Greening?”

”Oh,” said Sol, lightly, as if that made it all as plain to him as his own cracked thumbs. ”How much does Joe reckon he'll git off of that patch of berries when it begins to bear?”

”I never heard him say he expected to make anything,” said she, ”but I read in one of them fruit-growin' papers he takes that they make as much as three hundred dollars an acre from 'em back in Ellinoi.”

Sol got up, slowly; took a backward step into the yard; filled his lungs, opened his mouth, made his eyes round. Under the internal pressure his whiskers stood on end and his face grew red. ”Oh, you git _out_!” said he.

”I can show it to you in the paper,” she offered, making as if to put aside her sewing.

Sol laid a finger on his palm and stood with his head bent. After a bit he looked up, his eyes still round.

”If he even makes a hundred, that'll be two thousand dollars a year!”

It was such a magnificent sum that Sol did not feel like taking the familiarity with it of mentioning it aloud. He whispered it, giving it large, rich sound.

”Why, I reckon it would be,” said she, offhand and careless, just as if two thousand a year, more or less, mattered very little to Joe.

”That's more than I ever made in my whole dad-blame life,” said Sol.

”Well, whose fault is it, Sol?” asked she.

”I don't believe it can be done!”

”You'll see,” she a.s.sured him, comfortably.