"Ach, it don't last long when he gets cross."
"Where is he now, Mother Bab?"
"Working in the tobacco field."
"In the hot sun!"
"He says he don't mind it. He's so pleased with the tobacco this summer. It looks fine. If the hail don't get in it now it'll bring about four hundred dollars, he thinks. That will be the most he has ever gotten out of it. But tobacco is an awful risk. If the weather is just so it pays about the best of anything around this part of the country, I guess, but so often the poor farmers work hard in the tobacco fields and then the hail comes along and all is spoiled. But ours is fine so far."
"I'm glad. David has been working hard all summer with it."
"Sometimes he gets discouraged; Phares's crops always seem to do better than David's, yet David works just as hard. But Phares plants no tobacco."
At that moment Phares Eby himself came into the room where the two sat. He appeared a trifle embarrassed when he saw Phœbe. Since the June meeting under the sycamore tree by the old stone quarry he had made no special effort to see her, and the several times they had met in that time he had greeted her with marked restraint.
"Good-afternoon," he murmured, looking from Phœbe to Mother Bab and back again to Phœbe. "I didn't know you were here, Phœbe. I—Aunt Barbara, I came in to tell you there's a bright red bird in the woods down by the cornfield."
"There is!" cried Phœbe with much interest. "Is it all red, or has it black wings and tail?"