“Well, that’s quite natural,” responded Ned. “Your father must have been famous in his line, according to all those scrap-book articles you showed me the other day.”
“Anyhow, I’m getting tired of the dull life I’m leading here,” went on Dave seriously. “I’d like to do something besides slave for a man who drives me to the limit, and amount to something in the world.”
“Good for you!” cried Ned, giving his friend and chum an encouraging slap on the back. “You’ll get there—you’re the kind of a boy that always does.”
“Hey, there! are you ever going to start?” rang out a harsh, complaining voice in the yard outside.
Dave hurriedly threw an old horse blanket over his model and glanced out of the window.
“It’s Mr. Warner,” he said, while Ned made a wry face. “I’ll have to be going.”
Old Silas Warner stood switching his cane around and growling out threats, as Dave reached the yard and crossed it to where a thin bony horse and an old rickety wagon stood. The vehicle held a dozen bags filled with potatoes, every one of which Dave had planted and dug as his hardened hands bore proof.
“You’ll quit wasting my time, Dave Dashaway,” carped the mean-faced old man, “or there’s going to be trouble.”
“I was just showing Ned about the loft,” explained Dave.
“Yah! Fine lot of more valuable time you’ve been wasting there, too,” snorted old Warner. “I’ll put a stop to some of it, you mark me. Now then, you get those bags of taters down to Swain’s warehouse and back again afore six o’clock, or you’ll get no supper. There’s a lot more of those taters to dig, but an hour or two this evening will finish them.”