“Glad to hear you say so,” said Frank. “Now this don’t look much of a cornfield, I suppose, to you who’ve seen ever so many acres all in one lot; but there’s one thing, you may call it ten acres to one—for that’s about the difference in the price of the corn out West and here—and when harvest comes, you’ll have a big pile of heavy ears. Don’t believe I am much of a born farmer,” added the boy, “or I should have hung to the main chance a bit longer.”
“I sha’n’t take one single ear of your corn, Frank Hallock,” spoke up Harry. “Pray don’t think I’m mean enough to touch it.”
“But you must,” cried the twins in chorus. “You’ve got to have it; and,” added Kate, “if you only knew how hard Frank has worked in the lot since he knew ’twas yours, and you couldn’t help yourself lying over there at Mrs. Dobson’s, I know you would. And you are coming here to live next week, until your uncle up in Maine, or down in Maine, sends for you, or comes after you—and, oh, you don’t know how pretty your room is. Mamma made it so on purpose, and I helped her, too. Its—” but before Kate had time to finish the sentence, Harry interrupted her by saying,
“Please don’t tell me about it, for, Kate and Frank, I can’t live at Hallock Point.”
Harry’s statement was so utterly surprising that a momentary silence followed it, and then the “I should like to know whys” and the “why nots” overwhelmed the boy; but when finally Kate burst out with “I’m sure I don’t see what we have done that you will neither take Frank’s corn when he gives it to you, nor come to live with us, when we want to have you ever so much,” Harry felt compelled to say something, and what he said was simply this—
“I’m going to live in Pumpkin Delight Lane, with Mrs. Dobson.”
“Well, now, that is a good joke—going to live with Grandma Dobson!” laughed Frank; “just as though you meant what you say.”
“Indeed, I do,” Harry replied quite seriously.
Practical Kate said: “Why, Harry, don’t you know that Grandma Dobson is poor—I mean she hasn’t much money, nothing but the house and the land, I heard papa say one day; and before her father died and left the house to her, she used to make dresses.”
“Yes, I know she’s poor,” and Harry sighed.