eckon."

"I don't know as Joe'd take it," said she, folding her hands in her lap.
"Judge Maxwell had a hard time to git Joe to let him put in the money to
do things around here, and send him to college over in Shelbyville last
winter. Joe let him do it on the understandin' that it was a loan, to be
paid interest on and paid back when he was able."

"Well, from the start he's makin' it don't look like the judge 'd have
very long to wait for his money," said Sol. "Twenty acres of apple trees
all in a orchard together, and twenty acres of strawberries set out
betwixt and between the rows!"

He looked over the hillside and little apron of valley where Joe's young
orchard spread. Each tiny tree was a plume of leaves; the rows stretched
out to the hilltop, and over.

"I can figger out how twenty acres of apples can be picked and took care
of," reflected Sol, as if going over with himself something which he had
given thought to before, "but I'll be durned if I can figger out how any
man's goin' to pick and take care of twenty acres of strawberries!"

"Joe knows," said his mother.

"Well, I hope he does," sighed Sol, the sigh being breathed to give
expression of what remained unspoken. No matter what his hopes, his
doubts were unshaken.

No man had ever taken care of twenty acres of strawberries--nor the
twentieth part of one acre, for that matter--in that community. No man
could do it, according to the bone-deep belief of Sol and his kind.

"Joe says that's only a little dab of a start," said she.

"Cree-mo-nee!" said Sol, his mouth standing open like a mussel shell in
the sun. "When'll they be ripe?"

"Next spring."

"Which?" queried Sol, perking his head in puzzled and impertinent way,
very much as the rooster had done a little while before him.

"Next spring, I said," she repeated, nodding over her bonnet, into which
she was slipping the splints.

"No crop this year?"

"No; Joe says it weakens the plants to bear the first year they're set.
It takes the strength away from the roots, he says. He goes through the
field and snips off every bloom he sees when he's hoein' among 'em, and
I help him between times. We don't git all of 'em, by a mighty sight,
though."

Sol shook his head with wise depreciation.

"Throwin' away money," said he.

"Did you ever raise any strawberries?" she inquired, putting down the
bonnet, bringing Sol up with a sharp look.

"Reckon I raised as many as Joe ever did, and them main