“Do you think it would be all right for Bert to take in a load?” asked Mr. Watson of his hired man.
“Oh, sure!” was the answer.
“I’ll be very careful!” promised the small boy.
“Well, wait until I load the truck and you can take charge,” suggested Zeek, one of whose duties was to transport the soft peaches to the barn and later to the canning factory after they had been sorted.
Meanwhile Nan had taken Freddie and Flossie to the big barn where a number of men were engaged in the work of carefully sorting the best peaches into several grades.
“Well, all right,” said Mr. Watson, as he moved on to visit another of his orchards. “I’ll leave this to you and Zeek, my boy.”
Delighted at doing what seemed to be real work, as it was, in a way, Bert helped Zeek put into baskets the best of the soft peaches from the box of discarded ones. Some were so soft that it would not be wise to take them to the barn. These very soft ones and some that had been crushed or broken by falls were put in another box and later fed to the pigs and chickens.
When the small cart was loaded Zeek told Bert how to drive to reach the barn and also told the boy what to do when he got there.
“Aren’t you going to ride with me?” asked Bert, for he thought the hired man would at least be with him on the cart.
“No, I’m not going,” was the reply. “Land sakes, I guess you can manage a load of soft peaches all right, ’specially when Tramper is hitched to the cart.”