It wasn’t so bad once he got up. The smarting soon left his eyes, and the stiffness began to go out of his legs. They ached, of course, from the heels up, but that was from trying to keep up to the colts on the harrow yesterday. Then his mother had a berry turnover waiting for him to start out on. She had been telling him that, he remembered, while she tried to get him awake. So he took the halters in one hand and the turnover in the other and started out for the horses in a very philosophical frame of mind, considering everything. The dew on the grass was cool to his bare feet; the robins in the bushes as he passed didn’t seem to expect anyone so early, so from their reckless chattering he learned the location of many a new nest. He marked the places so he could show them to Jean. On the
hill in the pasture, where the sun was just coming up like a yellow half ball, the young cattle stood out like pieces cut out of black paper and pasted on; they looked funny when they moved. Then it was good to get up on old Nell’s broad grey back, and feel the shake of the friendly muscles under him. Altogether, if some miracle could have given him a father who would occasionally see eye-to-eye with him on things agricultural and personal, Billy would almost have played hookey from school for a life like this.
The forenoon seemed to be going uneventfully enough. Dan’s rather threatening admonition when they began the planting had been to “look sharp now” and not keep the horses standing, and Billy had determined to keep ahead of them at the sacrifice of any minor details. He had been shown just how far apart to drop the pieces, but when you see the furrow reaching up behind you like an unfriendly snake, and no escape before the end of the row; when the handle of the pail is cutting into the flesh of your arm and the bags of seed are rods down the field, there is a powerful temptation to make what you have go as far as possible. Suddenly the horses stopped and Dan came around to examine the planting.
“Hev you dropped ’em all as far apart as this?” he asked. “I might ’a’ knowed I couldn’t trust you. Never saw the time yet that you wasn’t
a durn sight more bother than help. Well, you c’n just stake off these rows, an’ when we’re through plantin’ you c’n dig ’em up with the hoe, an’ plant ’em right. Mebby that’ll learn you a little more than goin’ to school fer a while.”
Just when the neighbors’ dinner bells began to call the men from the farther fields, Dan again called across the headland: “You’d better go to the barn an’ get some more seed. Save the prize Carmens here fer the last rows an’ mind to shut the gate after you or the sow’ll be in.”
Billy hitched old Nell to the stone-boat, shut the gate after him and went for the seed. When he came back the gate was still closed, but Tibby and her family were demolishing the last of the prize Carmens. When she found she had to leave, she made straight for the vulnerable spot in the stump fence that had given her entrance. Billy drove the pigs ahead of him and went after some rails. On the way he heard his mother ring the dinner-bell, saw, from many a furtive glance back, his father stop at the littered remains of the prize Carmens, look all around and start on to the barn. The most Billy could hope for was that his wrath might have cooled a little before he would have to meet him. By the time he had blocked the hole in the fence and brought Nell up to the stable his father had gone to the house, so he climbed up and put down the hay, dampened old Nell’s oats as usual, so she wouldn’t
choke on them, and with his little heart palpitating till he could hardly swallow, approached the house.
The savory steam of stewed chicken came out from the kitchen. When the meat supply ran low in the spring his mother killed off the old hens. She always made hot biscuits to break into the gravy and had the grandest pot pies ever to tide a fellow over a time like this. If they had it for dinner when he was at school she saved a drumstick and the gizzard for him. He was almost forgetting his soul’s anxiety in the urgent pressure of his animal wants.
Mary knew something of what had happened. In fact Dan had informed her without softening the details. Still, in spite of the morning’s “aggrevations,” he was eating his dinner with satisfactory relish when Billy came in. She met Billy at the door to ask cheerfully: