"Exactly!" said mother. "They'll have to find out we are running our own business; but I'm sorry it fell to Laddie to show them. You could have done it better. It will come out all right. The Princess is not going to lose a man like Laddie on account of how he makes his money."
"Don't be too confident," said father. "With people of their stripe, how much money a man can earn, and at what occupation, constitute the whole of life."
She wasn't too confident. Yesterday she had been so happy she almost flew. To-day she kept things going, and sang a lot, but nearly every time you looked at her you could see her lips draw tight, a frown cross her forehead, and her head shake. Pretty soon we heard a racket on the road, so we went out. There was Laddie with the matched team of carriage horses and a plow. Now, in dreadfully busy times, father let Ned and Jo work a little, but not very much. They were not plow horses; they were roadsters. They liked to prance, and bow their necks and dance to the carriage. It shamed them to be hitched to a plow. They drooped their heads and slunk along like dogs caught sucking eggs. But they were a sight on the landscape. They were lean and slender and yet round too, matched dapple gray on flank and side, with long snow-white manes and tails. No wonder mother didn't want them to work. Laddie had reached through the garden fence and hooked a bunch of red tulips and yellow daffodils. The red was at Jo's ear, and the yellow at Ned's, and they did look fine. So did he! Big, strong, clean, a red flower in his floppy straw hat band; and after he drove through the gate, he began a shrill, fifelike whistle you could have heard a half mile:
"See the merry farmer boy, tramp the meadows through,
Swing his hoe in careless joy, while dashing off the dew.
Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee,
Farmer boy in gay reply now whistles cheerily."
The chorus was all whistle, and it was written for folks who could. It went up until it almost split the echoes, and Laddie could easily sail a measure above the notes. He did it too. As for me, I kept from sight. For a week Laddie whistled and plowed. He wore that tune threadbare, and got an almost continuous pucker on his lips. Leon said if he didn't stop whistling, and sing more, the girls would think he was doing a prunes and prisms stunt. So after that he sang the words, and whistled the chorus. But he made no excuse to go, and he didn't go, to Pryors'. When Sunday came, he went to Westchester to see Elizabeth, and stayed until Monday morning. Not once that week did the Princess ride past our house, or her father either. By noon Monday Laddie was back in the field, and I had all I could bear. He was neither whistling nor singing so much now, because he was away at the south end, where he couldn't be seen or heard at Pryors'. He almost scoured the skin from him, and he wore his gloves more carefully than usual. If he soiled his clothing in the least, and it looked as if he would make more than his share of work, he washed the extra pieces at night.
Tuesday morning I hurried with all my might, and then I ran to the field where he was. I climbed on the fence, sat there until he came up, and then I gave him some cookies. He stopped the horses, climbed beside me and ate them. Then he put his arms around me and hugged me tight.
"Laddie, do you know I did it?" I wailed.
"Did you now?" said Laddie. "No, I didn't know for sure, but I had suspicions. You always have had such a fondness for that particular piece of tinware."
"But Laddie, it means so much!"
"Doesn't it?" said Laddie. "A few days ago no one could have convinced me that it meant anything at all to me, or ever could. Just look at me now!"