If he had been aware of Mr Fleming’s distaste for all things untried, or “new-fangled,” it is likely he would have carried his request elsewhere. But, greatly to Davie’s surprise, his grandfather listened to the proposition of Mr Hemmenway with no special signs of disfavour, and he could only hope that the wonderful eloquence of their Yankee friend might not hinder rather than help his cause.
“With a fair start in the morning we calculate, with a middlin’ span of horses, to get over by noon as much ground as six men would get over, if they worked from sunrise to sundown, if they didn’t have to stop to eat or drink or take a resting-spell. We cut clean and even. There’ll be a little clipping, maybe, round the stumps and stone piles, but you don’t seem to have many of them. You just see me go once round your big field there with my team, and you’ll never want to touch a scythe again. Only give me the chance. The first day sha’n’t cost you nothing but my victuals and good feed of oats for my team. Now come, what do you say?”
Mr Fleming listened with patience and with some amusement, Davie thought.
“That is cheap enough surely,” said he.
“And nothing risked,” continued Mr Hemmenway. “It’ll be good for you and good for me, and it doesn’t often happen that both sides get the best of the bargain. Say yes, and I’ll be along by sunrise, and if I don’t make this young man here open his eyes first time round, I shall be some surprised.”
The only difficulty seemed lest there might be too much grass cut to be properly cared for, since they had not as yet engaged help.
“Don’t you fret about that. You’ll have the whole neighbourhood here looking on, and I don’t suppose they’ll stand still and do it. I’ll risk the making of the hay that’ll be cut to-morrow.”
The idea of the whole neighbourhood looking on, or even helping to make hay, was not so agreeable to Mr Fleming as Mr Hemmenway might have supposed, and Davie hastened to suggest that Ben Holt and two or three others who had not yet commenced in their own fields might give help for one day, and so the matter was arranged. Mr Hemmenway lost no time. The machine was brought to Ythan that night, and when Mr Fleming came out in the morning operations had long been commenced in Mr Hemmenway’s best style, and Davie was occupying his place on the high seat of the machine, and driving “the team” steadily round the great square, which was growing beautifully less at every turn.
Not quite the whole neighbourhood came to look on, but a good many did. Among the rest was Deacon Scott, who was almost as much averse to “new-fangled” notions as was Mr Fleming. But he engaged the machine for the next day, and paid a good price for it—which was all clear gain, Mr Hemmenway admitted to Davie in confidence. Going about from field to field for a few days in a neighbourhood was the company’s way of advertising. If it did not pay this year it would next, for half the farmers in the country would have a machine by another year.
“And I don’t say it is any way among the impossibles that we should conclude to give your little town a lift, by establishing a branch factory in it. You’ve got a spry little stream here, and some good land, and there’ll be some handsome fields for the Eureka to operate upon when the stumps get cleared out. But you are considerably behind the times in the way of implements. You want to be put up to a dodge or two, and we are the folks to do it, in the way of machinery,” and so on.