“It's not quite as hard as the upland corn, for the growing season was not quite long enough for it; but it's better than the average in the county----”
“Three hundred and forty bushel of shelled corn from six acres?” cried Henry. “I should say it was! It's worth fifty cents now right at the crib--a hundred and seventy dollars. Hiram! that'll make dad let me go to the agricultural college.”
“What?” cried Hiram, surprised and pleased. “Have you really got that idea in your head?”
“I been gnawin' on it ever since you talked so last spring,” admitted his friend, rather shyly. “I told father, and at first he pooh-poohed.
“But I kept on pointing out to him how much more you knowed than we did--”
“That's nonsense, Henry,” interrupted Hiram. “Only about some things. I wouldn't want to set myself up over the farmers of this neighborhood as knowing so much.”
“Well, you've proved it. Dad says so himself. He was taken all aback when I showed him how you had beat him on the tomato crop. And I been talking to him about your corn.
“That hit father where he lived,” chuckled Henry, “for father's a corn-growing man--and always has been considered so in this county.
“He watched the way you tilled your crop, and he believed so much shallow cultivating was wrong, and said so. But he says you beat him on poor ground; and when I tell him what that lowland figures up, he'll throw up his hands.
“And I'm going to take a course in fertilizers, farm management, and the chemistry of soils,” continued Henry.
“Just as you say, I believe we have been planting the wrong crops on the right land! Anyway, I'll find out. I believe we've got a good farm, but we're not getting out of it what we should.”
“Well, Henry,” admitted Hiram, slowly, “nothing's pleased me so much since I came into this neighborhood, as to hear you say this. You get all you can at the experiment station this winter, and I believe that your father will soon begin to believe that there is something in 'book farming', after all.”
If it had not been for the hair-hung sword over them, Mrs. Atterson and Hiram would have taken great delight in the generous crops that had been vouchsafed to them.
“Still, we can't complain,” said the old lady, “and for the first time for more'n twenty years I'm going to be really thankful at Thanksgiving time.”