He spent the afternoon, after his return to “Carhurst,” in planting his garden and had the seeds all in by the time June came. He displayed the result proudly. Every row was marked with a little stick on which was perched the empty seed packet like a white nightcap. June admired flatteringly and then, for so it always happens, criticised.
“Seems to me like you ought to put them rows ’tother way roun’, Mas’ Wayne, ’cause the sun goin’ to shine this yere way. Back home they always set the rows with the sun.”
“That’s so, June,” acknowledged Wayne. “I forgot that.” But he was in far too fine spirits to be worried by a little thing like that. He said he reckoned they’d grow just the same, and June agreed with him, but a trifle doubtfully. Then June questioned whether the planting had been done at the right time of the moon, and Wayne lost patience and told him to get busy and help carry stones for a border. They had to fairly dig for those stones and it was almost twilight by the time they had the bed neatly edged. Then June washed up and set about his culinary duties, leaving Wayne outside to admire his handiwork from various angles and try to picture mentally the appearance of that bed three months later.
Wayne had brought home a slice of ham as a special delicacy and June fried it to a turn, after cutting it in three pieces to fit the diminutive pan, and made coffee, and cut bread, and opened a can of peaches, and, in brief, prepared a banquet fit for Luculus—or two very healthy and hungry boys, one of whom had been on short rations for a week! Afterward, by the light of a swinging lantern which had taken the place of the candles with which they had at first tried to illumine their abode, Wayne read from the newspapers that June picked up at the hotel and brought home with him. June had a weakness for such things as robberies, murders, fires, shipwrecks, and similar sensations, while Wayne always looked for the baseball news first. So, to be quite fair, he alternated, reading first, perhaps, the story of a Texas bank robbery and following with an interesting rumour regarding the trade of Catcher Moffet to the Pirates by the Braves. Toward the last of the news budget, especially if the robberies and train wrecks and such gave out, June usually fell asleep and snored unflatteringly, and Wayne finished his perusal in silence. But tonight the latter early exhausted the papers and the boys fell to a discussion of Wayne’s new job and to laying plans for the future.
“Of course,” said Wayne, “if I get eight dollars a week it won’t be long before we can go on to New York.” He made the observation without apparent enthusiasm, however. For the past fortnight New York had slipped out of their conversation. June nodded, opened his mouth, closed it again without speaking and once more nodded. “It doesn’t cost us more than three dollars a week to live and so we’d have twenty dollars saved up in no time at all,” Wayne added.
“That’s so,” agreed the other. “Reckon New York’s a mighty fine city, ain’ it?”
“Wonderful, June.”
“Uh-huh. Bigger’n Medfield consid’able?”
“Medfield! Why, New York’s a thousand times bigger than Medfield, you silly!”
“Say it is?” June digested that in silence for a moment. Then: “Must be a powerful big ol’ place, Mas’ Wayne,” he said dolorously. “Ain’ you afraid we’d get lost or somethin’. There was a feller I know got lost in Atlanta one time an’ he didn’ find hisself for days an’ days, no sir! An’ I ’spects New York’s a heap bigger’n Atlanta, ain’ it?”