"Get the other neighbors to go into the deal with you. It will save your crops in the end. First you know, you'll have to give up raising grain to starve out the pest. And maybe that won't do it."
"'A fool and his money are soon parted,'" said Turner.
"Maybe," Hiram rejoined slyly. "But how about a fool and his wheat?"
"Huh!" was Turner's only comment.
Meanwhile, Hiram learned that Adam Banks had been at home over Sunday and on that occasion could easily have brought the specimens of the grain pest to the fields on Sunnyside. He would never have a chance to repeat the trick, however—if he was guilty—for there was a guard at the wheat field every night, and by day some of the workmen were always in sight of the piece of seed-wheat.
Hiram Strong enjoyed Sister's visit immensely. The girl seemed just like a bit of home—the only real home Hiram had known since he was a child. Had she been really his sister he could have thought no more of her.
And she was still a healthy, wholesome girl. She was not growing up too fast, as he sometimes thought Lettie Bronson was.
Sister, in a gingham frock and one of Miss Pringle's sunbonnets, was out with Hiram all over the big farm. She knew enough about agricultural pursuits now, and loved nature enough, to enjoy thoroughly Sunnyside and all it meant to Hiram. The latter, too, found in Sister a confidante such as he had never had before.
She could help, too. The clover crop ripened suddenly because of a dry spell. The brilliant crimson blossoms which gave to the fields a blush such as no other flower gives, began to turn brown at their base petals. The mower had to be brought into use at once—in fact, two of them.
Sister rode the tedder and managed to stir the clover well behind both mowing machines. In spite of the dry spell it was a heavy crop of clover hay, and the odor of it ascended in the noonday heat as the incense must have ascended from the altars to the Sun God in ancient times.