"No, sir."
"Well, if you've had all you want to eat, Bud," Gramps said, looking meaningfully at Gram as he emphasized the nickname, "we might as well put you to work."
"Now, Delbert," Gram said, "I say that boy ought to rest his first day with us."
"And I say he ought not," Gramps said firmly. "He might as well get the idea why he's here from the first, and why he's here is to work. Come on, Bud."
Bud said nothing as he turned to follow Gramps out of the kitchen, but he was not worried. He had known he was coming to work. Tales from other farmed-out youngsters had drifted back to the orphanage and some of them were not pretty tales, but anything was better than continuing as an object of charity. He was a man and he could stand on his own two feet. Although he might not like what came, he could face it.
He felt a little better when they came onto the back porch. The big dog that had been ambling toward the house when he arrived was now lying on the stoop. It rose, wagged its tail amiably and touched Bud's hand with a moist muzzle. No matter what happened, Bud thought, it couldn't be all bad now that he had a friend.
Gramps did not stop or look back until they came to a broad cultivated field in which orderly rows of fledgling crops had been so carefully planted and so precisely spaced that they formed an exact pattern. The dog, who knew that he was not to walk on cultivated ground, sat down at the edge of the field. Bud asked his name.
"Shep," Gramps said, and then he pointed to the field. "Do you know what those are?"
"No, sir."
"Beans," said Gramps, and the tone of his voice showed pity for anybody unable to identify a growing bean. "Now stoop down here 'longside me."