“Too bad, wasn’t it, mamma? What would you do without pretty things?”
“I should love you, Kate.”
“But I’m pretty, folks say,” said Kate archly; and then Harry and Frank couldn’t help laughing at Kate, and everybody felt better for that little laugh. And the Hallocks hurried home; for the brothers and sisters who were married, and had homes of their own, were come to spend Christmas at the house on the Point, and there was to be a grand Christmas dinner that day.
Mrs. Dobson and Harry sat down to eat their Christmas dinner; while Josh looked on, quite certain that his own dinner would come soon after.
After Christmas the winter wore away very rapidly, and in April Harry Cornwall began his life as a farmer. Mrs. Dobson owned about sixteen acres of land, and with the aid of her trusty helper, Harry, she resolved to till it once more, although all the old farmers shook their heads disapprovingly, and said she had much better let it out “on shares”; but Mrs. Dobson had found that her side of the “shares” was always very small, and that the land was getting terribly run down, as they grew smaller year by year.
Harry did not fancy the life of a farmer, but he loved Mrs. Dobson so well that he was fully determined to do the best he could, for her sake; and he helped with the plowing, and the planting he did with his own hands, following with shrewdness, not the advice of the farmers, but their own example in regard to the time of planting and the manner of planting: for he noticed that, like other men, their professions and their practice seldom agreed. And so, when, one night, his field for planting corn was all in readiness for work on the morrow, and a neighbor came, and leaning over the fence, said, “It isn’t time to put in corn yet for a week or ten days, my boy,” “my boy” watched, and seeing the next morning his adviser go down the lane with bags of something very like corn in his cart, he came to the conclusion that he was going to put in his seed that day, and planted his own.
Frank Hallock made many promises to help on this day or that, but something was sure to happen, and so well-meaning but unstable Frank was almost certain to be absent at the appointed time.
As for Kate, she took the liveliest interest in farming occupations both at home and abroad, and just as certain as she saw anything coming up at the Point, whether it was potatoes, beans, corn, or any other green thing, she would within a day or two contrive a drive or a walk down Pumpkin Delight Lane to the sea, to see if anything that looked like it was coming out of the ground in Harry’s brown fields.
One day Frank got vexed because he could not have Neptune when he wanted to drive on the beach, and somehow it would be impossible to tell just how it did grow—but that little cloud of vexation, instead of clearing, grew until Kate was thoroughly out of patience with Frank. He became morose, and didn’t want to go to school.
“Frank don’t feel well,” Mrs. Hallock said to her husband on one of the warmest days in June, “and I think we may as well let him leave school.”