"Do you mean that you didn't want to come?" asked Phemie, in a disappointed tone.
"I'm in the newspaper business; 'twas kind of risky to leave it; there's so many pushin' in. But they don't want me to home; mother she's married again, and he don't like me. Jicksy is all I've got that's really my own. If he could have come too—"
She swallowed a lump in her throat with determination, and raised her eyes to the old sweet apple-tree whose fruit was yellowing in the August sunshine.
"Are them apples?" she asked. "They ain't near so shiny and handsome as Judy Magrath keeps on her stand; Judy shines 'em with her apron. I never was in the country before, and I don't know as I'm going to like it. But I'm run down, they say, and I've got a holler cough, so I had to come."
Phemie had almost begun to wish that they had not taken a country-week girl; but now she noticed, suddenly, the meagreness of the tall form, and the deep hollows under the snapping black eyes, and repented. It was proverbial that people grew plump and strong on Sweet Apple Hill.
Aunt Esther came out, and the girl's manner softened under the influence of her tactful kindness. She seemed to like Grandpa Trueworthy too; she said she had a grandpa once, and 'twas the most she ever did have that was like other folks.
But, after all, it was she and Gideon who seemed most congenial. Gideon explained, with a gravely approving wag of the head, that she was "business." Gideon flattered himself that he had abilities in that line, and he was cultivating them diligently. He had not expected to get any hints from a girl; but the country-week girl was assistant at a newspaper stand, and she also "tended" for Judy Magrath when Judy, as she explained with sad and severe head-shakings, was obliged to go to a funeral; but it was Judy's only infirmity, she added, very charitably.
Of course girls did not generally have such business opportunities as these, and it was Gideon's opinion that she was "considerable of a girl, anyhow." It must be confessed that Aunt Esther was a little anxious, and the minister expressed a doubtful hope that she would not prove "a corrupting influence." Gideon told Grazella all his business plans, which Phemie never cared to listen to. It was after tea one evening, and he and Grazella were sitting on the orchard wall, while Phemie and little Adoniram shook the old damson-plum-tree. He told her of the contract he had made with the owners of the canning factory at Bayberry Port, to supply them with berries for the whole season, and, what he wouldn't tell any fellow, of the great find he had made—a blackberry thicket over on the other side of Doughnut Hill, almost an acre, and the berries just beginning to ripen! He was going to sell the plums off his trees, too, and, later on, his crab-apples, he'd got a business opening, she'd better believe.
Grazella's eyes snapped, and her thin, sallow cheeks reddened suddenly. "You'd ought to have a partner!" she cried.
Gideon shook his head doubtfully. "It's awful risky takin' partners," he said. "If they ain't smart, you have to do all the work; if they are, they are apt to cheat you."