“Well, I’m a real farmer now,” said I.
“Ye are, shurely,” Mike replied. “Them’s good peas, if they was planted late.”
We drove past the golf links and the summer hotel, to the market, where I was already known, I found, and greeted by name as I entered.
“I’ll buy anything you’ll sell me,” said the proprietor, “and be glad to get it. Funny thing about this town, the way folks won’t take the trouble to sell what they raise. Most of the big summer estates have their own gardens, of course, but there’s nearly a hundred families that don’t, and four boarding-houses, and the hotels. Why, the hotels send to New York for vegetables–if you can beat that! Guess all our farmers with any gumption have gone to the cities.”
“Well,” said I, “I’m not in farming for my health, which has always been good. I’ve got more than a bushel of peas out there.”
“Peas!” cried the market man. “Why, I have more demands for peas than I can fill. The folks who could sell me peas won’t plant ’em ’cause it’s too much trouble or expense to provide the brush. I’ll give you eight cents a quart for peas to-day.”
“This is too easy,” I whispered to Mike, as we went out to get the baskets.
I sold my rhubarb also, and came away with a little book in which there was entered to my credit $4.16 for peas and $1.66 for rhubarb. I put the book proudly in my pocket, for it represented my first earnings from the farm, and mounting the farm wagon again told Mike to drive me to the hotel.
As we pulled up before the veranda, the line of old ladies in rockers focussed their eyes upon us.
“Shure,” whispered Mike, “they look like they was hung out to dry!”