And they were giving something of value for the fifty-cent orders that came in with a rush. With care any gardener could raise seed enough for an acre of grain, just as their advertisement said. The Staff of Life Wheat was a really wonderful variety.
Of course, the advertising cost a good deal and the exploitation of the wheat in this way entailed much work. But the profit was enticing.
The Rural Free Delivery mail carrier began to object to handling the traffic of Sunnyside Farm, and Battick was obliged to drive to Pringleton three times a week to mail packets of seed and get the money orders cashed. Mr. Bronson banked the money in a special account at the Plympton National Bank, and the seed selling business grew in importance.
Miss Pringle had learned to use a typewriter, and Battick had to hire her to help with the correspondence. This pleased Hiram immensely, for it put Yancey Battick in a position where he had to associate with the good-hearted spinster. The man did not have much show to continue a woman hater when he was associated daily with Delia Pringle!
"I told you," chuckled Orrin, "that Delia had set her cap for a particular person in this vicinity. And it is not you or me or Jimmy Larry. Yancey Battick is in much more danger right now from Delia, than his wheat ever was from the plottings of Adam Banks, believe me!"
CHAPTER XXX
KING CORN
Hiram Strong had grown taller corn with bigger ears on it in the East than any of the now ripening crop on Sunnyside Farm. But in bulk of shelled corn he knew he had never equaled this present crop.
One small field he had prepared especially for his seed corn. By this time he had come strongly to believe in the yellow-red strain of corn he had originally obtained from Daniel Brown, and this special field had been planted to that variety exclusively.
Hiram had from the very start prepared this field in a particular way. It had been a fallow piece on which had been thrown with the manure spreader during the winter about ten tons of fertilizer to the acre.