“For goodness' sake, Hiram! it isn't as much as that, is it?” gasped Henry, viewing the figures the young farmer wrote proudly in his memorandum book.
“Six acres—six hundred and eighty baskets of sound corn,” crowed “Hiram. And it's corn that is corn, as Mr. Bronson says.
“It's not quite as hard as the upland corn, for the growing season was not quite long enough for it; but it's better than the average in the county——”
“Three hundred and forty bushel of shelled corn from six acres?” cried Henry. “I should say it was! It's worth fifty cents now right at the crib—a hundred and seventy dollars. Hiram! that'll make dad let me go to the agricultural college.”
“What?” cried Hiram, surprised and pleased. “Have you really got that idea in your head?”
“I been gnawin' on it ever since you talked so last spring,” admitted his friend, rather shyly. “I told father, and at first he pooh-poohed.
“But I kept on pointing out to him how much more you knowed than we did—”
“That's nonsense, Henry,” interrupted Hiram. “Only about some things. I wouldn't want to set myself up over the farmers of this neighborhood as knowing so much.”
“Well, you've proved it. Dad says so himself. He was taken all aback when I showed him how you had beat him on the tomato crop. And I been talking to him about your corn.
“That hit father where he lived,” chuckled Henry, “for father's a corn-growing man—and always has been considered so in this county.