why he was so absorbed in his garden. When he was not weeding or watering or planting, he was counting the number of pea-pods on every vine, or the ears of corn as they tasselled out on each stalk. He had put brains as well as muscle into his summer's work, asking questions and advice of every gardener in Bardstown, and carefully reading the agricultural papers one of them loaned him. Every vegetable he attempted to raise was a success, and he carried them all three miles down the road toward the city, to some rich customers that he found in the elegant suburban homes there. They were willing to pay nearly double the price that the Bardstown people offered him, everything he had was so fresh and good.
It was a long way to trudge with his heavy baskets, and he longed every day for the wheel he was trying so hard to win. "Won't I spin along then!" he said to himself on more than one occasion, as he dragged his tired feet homeward.
His Aunt Jane wanted to buy some of his vegetables, and hinted several times that he might supply the table once in awhile for nothing; but beyond an occasional contribution in the way of a few inferior vegetables that he could not sell, he would not part with any at the price she offered.
"He's a boy after your own heart, Peter Morgan," she complained to her husband. "He's closer than the bark on a tree."
"Well, that's nothing against him," was the answer. "That's business. He'll be rich some day. Keep all you get and get all you can is the only way to get along in the world, according to my notion."
It was the Monday after school was out that Todd Walters also started to work. He was selling fly-paper on commission for his friend, the druggist. It was that sticky kind, called "Tanglefoot," that promises such a pleasant path to the unwary insect, but proves such a snare and a delusion at the last.
Mrs. Walters waved him good-bye from the kitchen door as he started hopefully off, bare-footed and happy, with a smile all over his little, round, honest face. He came back at noon with forty cents and a glowing account of his morning's work.
"I might have made more," he said, "but Mrs. Carr asked me to play with the baby while she ran across the street to ask about another cook. Hers is gone, and she was afraid to leave the baby by itself while she hunted another. Then when I stopped at Mrs. Foster's, the professor's wife, you know, she was nearly crying. She had lost a ring in the grass that she thought everything of. It had belonged to the professor's grandmother. I helped her look for it for nearly an hour, and at last I found it on the tennis-court. It was a beauty, and she was so glad she fairly hugged me, and wanted to pay me for finding it, but of course I wouldn't take anything for a little work like that."
"Of course not," echoed his mother. "Well, what else hindered you?"
"Old Mr. Beemer for one thing. He is too blind to read, you know, and he was sitting out under a tree, with a letter in his hand. His daughter told me she had read it to him five times this morning, but he wants to hear it every half-hour. He is so old and childish. She had bought several sheets of fly-paper, so I stopped and read it through twice, and he seemed so pleased, and called me the light of his eyes. I hope I can do better than this this afternoon."
Mrs. Walters took the four dimes he handed her to put away, and, as they jingled down into the old cracked ginger jar that served for Todd's bank, she said: "Well, under the circumstances, I'm glad you didn't earn any more this morning, if it would have kept you from doing those little kindnesses. You need your clothes bad enough, in all conscience, but it is better to smooth out the way for people as you go along. Old Solomon was right, loving favour is better than silver and gold."
Todd's sunburned face grew so red, as his mother unconsciously stumbled upon the motto that he had chosen, that he turned a somersault on the kitchen floor to hide his embarrassment. He need not have been so confused, for she was always saying such things.
[Illustration]
Sales were not always so good as they were the first hot morning. Many a day Todd wandered all over the little town, stopping at every door, only to be met by a disappointing "no." Many a time, when the hot pavements burned his bare feet and he was tired and
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