“Yes, sir,” replied Benny.
“How will you manage about your meals? They do their own cooking, you know.”
Benny didn’t know, and his heart sank, but Mr. Welch’s kind voice came in with the question, “’Twouldn’t put you out much to let him eat with your regular farm hands, would it?”
“No-o,” returned Mr. Bentley, “I don’t reckon it would.” And then turning to Benny he said, “Well, my boy, you’ll find a pretty rough set—Bohemians, and Italians, and Poles, and I don’t know what all—but if you’ve a mind to try it, I’ll take you along and give you a chance; that’s what you want, I suppose.”
“It isn’t so hot to-day, must have been a storm somewhere, last night, Thad.”
“Yes,” returned Mr. Welch, “must have been; I saw thunder heads off toward the northwest; they must have got it down Broad Neck way.”
“Well I’ve no time to lose,” said Mr. Bentley; “come along, boy, I’ll give you a lift over our way;” and Benny, with a strong regret at leaving this kind family at the Cross Roads, climbed up beside Mr. Bentley in his road cart, and after a ride of a mile saw a white house at the end of a long lane.
“That’s my place,” said Mr. Bentley. “I’ll let you off at the strawberry field, and when you hear the dinner horn come up to the house. That man sitting under the tree yonder is keeping tally. Every dozen boxes you pick you take ’em up there and he’ll give you a little wooden check, so that we both can keep count of what you pick. Each check means so much, and you can earn as much or as little as you’ve the will to do. There’s a board over yonder to carry your boxes on. Now, we’ll see what you can do.”
And Benny was left in the big strawberry field amid a motley crew of foreigners, strong misgivings at heart, and a little feeling of homesickness coming over him as he faced the reality of a day’s work in the hot sun, with no one to speak to him but strangers. He picked up courage, however, wondering, as he started to work, how much he could earn, and when his mother would get the queer, blotchy little letter he had written to her the night before.