"I should say I am! Delia, you are a darling!" cried Hiram, laughing up into the good but homely face of the spinster.
At this juncture the almost breathless Battick reached the roadside.
"Here! What's the matter with you, Strong?" he demanded, shaking the handful of wheatstraw at the young farm manager. "Do you hear what I say—or have you gone crazy over those women? That wheat is being eaten alive."
"Oh!" exclaimed Sister looking wonderingly at the excited Yancey Battick.
Miss Pringle scrambled down from the carriage. They gathered about the young farmer while he examined the affected heads of wheat.
These heads were now about half developed. The straw was already three feet and a half tall, and the bearded, three-sided heads had been most promising only a day or two before.
Now the tiny green bugs (and occasionally a long fly into which the insect develops) were evidently sucking the life of the plant. The presence of both the louse-like insect and the adult fly on the same staff of wheat proved to Hiram's mind at once that the creatures were of a single species and that their growth and development was very rapid—like that of hard-shell from soft-shell potato beetles.
"What do you call those things?" demanded Miss Pringle looking askance at the green insects.
"It is the English grain louse," Hiram announced with conviction. "I have been reading about the pest this winter. The louse did considerable damage in grain last year in New Jersey and other parts of the East. But how did it get into our wheat?"
"Ah-h!" groaned Yancey Battick. "You can easily answer that. It was put here by those that mean to ruin our crop. And between two days, too."