“Hi,” I said to my reddish-brownish-mustached Pop. And he just lifted one of his big farmer hands and saluted me like I was an officer in the army and he only a private. I swung open the gate, and, seeing the gladiolus by the mail box, stopped and took three or four quick deep sniffs at them, just as Pop swung inside and stopped beside the big plum tree in the gravelled driveway.
Then I looked quick at the sun, to see if I could sneeze, and I actually did, three times in quick succession, just as Pop turned off the motor and heard me do it.
“I hope you aren’t going to catch cold,” Pop said, and looked at me suspiciously. “You boys go in swimming today?”
“The water was almost too hot,” I said. “I never felt better in my life, only----” Right that second, something in my nose tickled again and I sneezed and was glad of it. “Maybe I’m allergic to something down here....”
“Down _where_?” Pop said, and looked at me from under his heavy eyebrows, which I noticed weren’t up any more but were starting to drop a little in the middle, like he was wondering “What on earth?” and trying to figure me out, like I was a problem in arithmetic or something.
“I mean----” I started to answer him, and then decided maybe it was the wrong time to talk to Pop about what I wanted to talk to him about. So I said, “Well, I better get back to those potatoes. There are only two more rows.”
“_Back_ to them?” Pop said, astonished. “You mean----?” He slid out of our long green car and looked toward the garden, and even from where we were, you could see that somebody had been hoeing the potatoes. “Well, what do you know about _that_? That’s wonderful! That’s unusual! That’s astonishing,” which I knew was some of Pop’s friendly sarcasm which he was always using on me, and I sort of liked it on account of Pop and I were good friends as well as he being my pop and I his red-haired, freckled-faced overworked boy, who didn’t have hayfever yet but was trying to get it.
Right that second I sneezed again, and Pop looked at me and said, “What’s that grin on your face for?” and I said, “Is there a grin on my face?”
“There certainly is,” he said, and I sighed and wished I could sneeze again, which for some reason I did, without even trying to, or looking at the sun, or smelling the gladiolus or anything, and I got a quick hope that maybe I was actually going to get hayfever.