“Wait for what?”
“Wait till you see the corn on my bottom-land—if the river down there doesn't drown it out. If we don't have too much rain, I'm going to have corn on that river-bottom that will beat anything in this county, Mr. Bronson.”
And the young farmer spoke with assurance.
CHAPTER XXV. THE BARBECUE
On the seventeenth day of June Hiram had “grappled out” a mess of potatoes for their dinner. They were larger than hen's eggs and came upon the table mealy and white.
Potatoes were selling at retail in Scoville for two dollars the bushel. Before the end of that week—after the lowland corn was planted—Hiram dug two rows of potatoes, sorted them, and carted them to town, together with some bunched beets, a few bunches of young carrots, radishes and salad.
The potatoes he sold for fifty cents the five-eighth basket, from house to house, and he brought back, for his load of vegetables, ten dollars and twenty cents, which he handed to Mrs. Atterson, much to that lady's joy.
“My soul and body, Hiram!” she exclaimed. “This is just a God-send—no less. Do you know that we've sold nigh twenty-five dollars' worth of stuff already this spring, besides that pair of pigs I let Pollock have, and the butter to St. Beris?”
“And it's only a beginning,” Hiram told her. “Wait til' the peas come along—we'll have a mess for the table in a few days now. And the sweet corn and tomatoes.