“Joe knows,” said his mother.
“Well, I hope he does,” sighed Sol, the sigh being breathed to give expression of what remained unspoken. No matter what his hopes, his doubts were unshaken.
No man had ever taken care of twenty acres of strawberries–nor the twentieth part of one acre, for that matter–in that community. No man could do it, according to the bone-deep belief of Sol and his kind.
“Joe says that’s only a little dab of a start,” said she.
“Cree-mo-nee!” said Sol, his mouth standing open like a mussel shell in the sun. “When’ll they be ripe?”
“Next spring.”
“Which?” queried Sol, perking his head in puzzled and impertinent way, very much as the rooster had done a little while before him.
“Next spring, I said,” she repeated, nodding over her bonnet, into which she was slipping the splints.
“No crop this year?”
“No; Joe says it weakens the plants to bear the first year they’re set. It takes the strength away from the roots, he says. He goes through the field and snips off every bloom he sees when he’s hoein’ among ’em, and I help him between times. We don’t git all of ’em, by a mighty sight, though.”