Mr. Whitman had an offer for wheat at a high price, and kept Mr. Conly and hired another man (as he had two barn floors) to help thresh, threshing being then all done with the flail, or else the grain was trampled out by cattle. The evenings were now getting to be quite long. James therefore began to study, and Mr. Conly assisted him and heard him recite. This was a golden opportunity for James, and he made the most of it. While devoting every leisure moment to study, James was not unmindful of his crop, there was not a weed to be seen among his potatoes, and I should not dare to say how many times the fingers of James and Bertie and Maria had been thrust into the hills on a voyage of discovery, and their conclusions, as reported by Maria to her mother, were most satisfactory. The soil indeed was full of great cracks, caused by the growth and crowding of the potatoes.
When Mr. Whitman found that Mr. Conly was disposed to assist James, and that James fully appreciated the privilege, he so arranged his work as to afford him every possible opportunity, and the boys were ever ready to take an additional burden upon themselves for the same purpose. One evening Arthur Nevins came in to see the boys, and said he had been to the mill that day and saw a notice posted up that Calvin Barker was buying potatoes for a starch mill, and would pay cash and a fair price for first-rate potatoes sound and sorted, no cut ones. Potatoes were cheap, there was not much of a market for them, and the traders would pay but part cash and the rest in goods.
“Now is your chance, James,” said the grandfather, “you want the money and don’t want goods.”
They brought only seventeen cents per bushel, but there were one hundred and sixteen bushels and a half, and after returning a bushel and one half to Mr. Whitman to replace the seed received of him, and paying Bertie for the colt, James had eighteen dollars and fifty cents left. In addition to this were several bushels of small and cut potatoes that he put in the cellar to give the colt.
Barker paid James in silver, and after reaching home he piled the coins up on the table and gazed at them with a sort of stupid wonder. Never before had he at one time possessed more than two shillings, seldom that,—more frequently a few pennies for holding a horse, opening a gate, or doing some errand for the men in the glass-house, and he counted them over and over.