“There isn’t any cotton in the North, June.”
“Ain’ no cotton?” ejaculated the other incredulously. “What all they plant up here, then, Mas’ Wayne?”
“Oh, apples, I reckon, and——”
“I can pick apples, then. I done pick peaches, ain’ I? What else they plant?”
“Why——” Wayne didn’t have a very clear notion himself, but it didn’t do to appear ignorant to June. “Why, they—they plant potatoes—white potatoes, you know—and—and peas and—oh, lots of things, I reckon.”
June pondered that in silence for a moment. Then: “But how come they don’t plant cotton?” he asked in puzzled tones.
“Too cold. It won’t grow for them up here.”
June gazed rather contemptuously about the gray morning landscape and grunted comprehendingly. “Uh-huh. Reckon I wouldn’t neither if I was a cotton plant! It surely is a mighty—mighty mean-lookin’ place, ain’ it?”
Well, it really was. Before them ran the railroad embankment, behind them was the little grove of bare trees and on either hand an uncultivated expanse of level field stretched away into the gray gloom. No habitation was as yet in sight. The telegraph poles showed spectrally against the dawn, and a little breeze, rising with the rising sun, made a moaning sound in the clustered wires. Sam came back from his profitless adventures and wormed himself between Wayne’s legs. June blew on his cold hands and crooned a song under his breath. The eastern sky grew lighter and lighter and suddenly, like a miracle, a burst of rose glow spread upward toward the zenith, turning the grayness into the soft hues of a dove’s breast! Wayne sprang to his feet, with an exclamation of pain as his cramped and chilled muscles responded to the demand, and stretched his arms and yawned prodigiously.