“Mamma, let’s go! Come on! They’re going right now, mamma!”
Elizabeth did not hear the child till he tugged at her skirts and exclaimed:
“Come on, mamma! Grandma won’t care. Come on!”
His mother looked down at the boy with a smile. How well she remembered the delights of threshing-day herself. She looked about the kitchen to see what had yet to be done.
“Wait a little, Jack. I’ve got to help get the table set and the dinner on to cook. You wouldn’t have me leave grandma to do all the work alone, would you?” she asked suggestively.
As Jack hesitated between his great desire to see the marvel of the stackyard and his desire to show as much manliness as his mother evidently expected of him, there was a noise on the doorstep and Hepsie came smilingly in.
“I followed you all on th’ pony,” she said. “I fixed it up with th’ boys yesterday t’ take a cold dinner to-day an’ let me come an’ help here. We’re lookin’ out that you don’t hurt yourself to-day, Mis Farnshaw,” she added, addressing the older woman.
“Now you can go to the threshing machine too, grandma!” Jack cried with delight. “Come on, let’s go right now!”
“Not now, Jack,” Elizabeth said. “Hepsie didn’t come to get the dinner alone.”
“Oh, yes, she did! She likes to,” Jack replied so confidently that they all laughed, and Hepsie fell on the child and hugged him.