Then they went to the house, Janet carrying a precious egg in each hand. As she came up to the back stoop she saw Rachel in the kitchen and called to her.
“Look, Rachel! Two more eggs. Isn’t that fine?”
Rachel came out on the stoop and smiled: “It shore am, honey. Putty soon you’ll have two dozen to your credit on my books.”
“Well, I guess I’m ’most through with my trials and tribulations now, but poor Nat’s have begun again,” remarked Janet.
“Oh, shucks! All pertatters has bugs. Dat’s no trouble atall. Nat’lie’ll learn some day dat gardenin’ ain’t all fun,” laughed Rachel, as she took the two eggs.
“Natalie’s going to powder them with Paris Green. Is it good for bugs, Rachel?” asked Norma.
“Yeh, best pizen I know of but I done tol Natalie dat it ain’t no good to use at evenin’ or late afternoon. It’s got to be squirted over the leaves when dey is fresh and dewy. Den the powder cakes on and smudders all the eggs and hatchin’ bugs. And it keeps the big fellers f’om flyin’ and gettin’ any more to eat. Dey jus’ has to die.”
Sam come up to the stoop at this moment and added his wisdom to that already expressed by his aunt. “I usta fix up tomater cans last summer on a farm, and we filled ’em half full of kerosene. Den wid little sticks to knock the bugs offen the plants we got dem inside the cans. The ile did the rest for us.”
“Sam, that’s a good idea! If you could fix up some cans for us now, we’d go to work and help drown the bugs,” said Janet.
“It won’t take a minute to rig up the cans,” said Sam.