n the midst of our frolic Peter and Sam came on the scene, and as far
as Peter was concerned it was indeed a transformation scene. Sam was
very much washed and slick from some time at the wash-bench, and Peter
was likewise, only Peter was not the Peter whom I had brought from town
that very morning. He was attired in a pair of Sam's overalls that could
have been wrapped around him twice, and he had a bit of color in his
cheeks under his eyes, though the eyes were slightly dazed as to
expression.

"Good work, Betty, for only two hours," said Sam, looking at the three
long ranks of slain weeds and then at his watch. "Pete and I are going
to pick peas for to-morrow's market right after dinner. Want to help?"

I assented from pure ignorance, and we all went in to devour one of
Mammy's chicken dinners, the like of which is not cooked by another
person in the Harpeth Valley. The way Peter ate would have made the
black beauty in mother's kitchen swell with jealousy until there were
danger to her own black skin. Immediately after the gorge Sam gave me a
basket, gave Peter another, and then looked around for the Byrd, with a
smaller box; but the Byrd had flown.

"I'll have to tan him for shirking like that," said Sam, looking off
into the bushes. "You Byrd!" But there was no response. That ought to
have roused my suspicions, but it didn't. I went on down to that
pea-patch as innocent as a newly born lamb, with Peter walking beside
me, enthusing over the landscape and swinging the light basket with
elegant nonchalance.

"I see, Betty dear--I see that there is a great satisfaction in the
pragmatic accomplishment, and--" he was saying when we came out of the
woods onto the southern slope, where lie the long rows of peas, which
are making Sam's fortune. He got them in by working two days and all one
night in a bright spell in mid-February, and nobody for twenty miles
around has any, while he has more than he can gather to market at a top
price; that is, more than he can gather himself with Byrd's assistance,
he explained to us, as he showed us just how to snap the pod against our
thumbs.

"I ought to put five barrels into Hayesboro every day now for a week
before anybody else gets any," he said, as he squatted at the head of a
row between Peter and me, and we all began to pull at the beautiful
gray-green vines and snap off the full, green pods. I looked across at
poor, innocent, enthusiastic Peter and saw his finish.

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