This variety of vegetables were now all growing finely. He sold nearly six dollars' worth of radishes in town, and these radishes he showed Mrs. Atterson were really "clear profit." They had all been pulled from the rows of carrots and other small seeds.
There were several heavy rains after the tempest which had been so Providential; the ground was well saturated, and the river had risen until it roared between its banks in a voice that could he heard, on a still day, at the house.
The rains started the vegetation growing by leaps and bounds; weeds always increase faster than any other growing thing.
There was plenty for Hiram to do in the garden, and he kept Sister and Old Lem Camp busy, too. They were at it from the first faint streak of light in the morning until dark.
But they were well--and happy. Mother Atterson, her heart troubled by thought of " that Pepper-man," could not always repress her smiles. If the danger of losing the farm were past, she would have had nothing in the world to trouble her.
The hundred eggs she had purchased for five dollars had proven more than sixty per cent fertile. Some advice that Hiram had given her enabled Mrs. Atterson to handle the chickens so that the loss from disease was very small.
He knocked together for her a couple of pens, eight feet square, which could be moved about on the grass every day. In these pens the seventy, or more, chicks thrived immensely. And Sister was devoted to them.
Meanwhile the old white-faced cow, that had been a terror to Mother Atterson at the start, had found her calf, and it was a heifer.
"Take my advice and raise it," said Hiram. "She is a scrub, but she is a pretty good scrub. You'll see that she will give a good measure of milk. And what this farm needs is cattle.
"If you could make stable manure enough to cover the cleared acres a foot deep, you could raise almost any crop you might name--and make money by it. The land is impoverished by the use of commercial fertilizers, unbalanced by humus.""Well, I guess You know, Hiram," admitted Mrs. Atterson. "And that calf certainly is a pretty creeter. It would be too bad to turn it into veal."Hiram did not intend to raise the calf expensively, however. He took it away from its mother right at the start, and in two weeks it was eating grass, and guzzling skimmed milk and calf-meal, while the old cow was beginning to show her employer her value.
Mrs. Atterson bought a small churn and quickly learned that "slight" at butter-making which is absolutely essential if one would succeed in the dairy business.
The cow turned out to pasture early in May, too; so her keep was not so heavy a burden. She lowed some after the calf; but the latter wasgrowing finely under Hiram's care, and Mrs. Atterson had at least two pounds of butter for sale each week, and the housekeeper at the St. Beris school paid her thirty-five cents a pound for it.
Hiram gradually picked up a retail route in the town, which customers paid more for the surplus vegetables--and butter--than could be obtained at the stores. He had taught Sister how to drive, and sometimes even Mrs. Atterson went in with the, vegetables.
This relieved the young farmer and allowed him to work in the fields. And during these warm, growing May days, he found plenty to do. Just as the field corn pushed through the ground he went into the lot with his 14- tooth harrow and broke up the crust and so killed the ever-springing weeds.
With the spikes on the harrow "set back," no corn-plants were dragged out of the ground. This first harrowing, too, mixed the fertilizer with the soil, and gave the corn the start it so sadly needed.
Busy as bees, the four transplanted people at the Atterson farmhouse accomplished a great deal during these first weeks of the warming season. And all four of them--Mrs. Atterson, Sister, Old Lem, and Hiram himself-- enjoyed the work to the full.
