aughters an'
daughter-in-laws, old man, old woman, an' the babies. They have a sayin'
that a kid four years old that can't pasture one cow on the county road
an' keep it fat ain't worth his salt. Why, the Silvas, the whole tribe
of 'em, works a hundred acres in peas, eighty in tomatoes, thirty in
asparagus, ten in pie-plant, forty in cucumbers, an'--oh, stacks of
other things."

"But how do they do it?" Saxon continued to demand. "We've never been
ashamed to work. We've worked hard all our lives. I can out-work any
Portuguese woman ever born. And I've done it, too, in the jute mills.
There were lots of Portuguese girls working at the looms all around me,
and I could out-weave them, every day, and I did, too. It isn't a case
of work. What is it?"

The lineman looked at her in a troubled way.

"Many's the time I've asked myself that same question. 'We're better'n
these cheap emigrants,' I'd say to myself. 'We was here first, an' owned
the land. I can lick any Dago that ever hatched in the Azores. I got a
better education. Then how in thunder do they put it all over us, get
our land, an' start accounts in the banks?' An' the only answer I know
is that we ain't got the sabe. We don't use our head-pieces right.
Something's wrong with us. Anyway, we wasn't wised up to farming. We
played at it. Show you? That's what I brung you in for--the way old
Silva an' all his tribe farms. Book at this place. Some cousin of his,
just out from the Azores, is makin' a start on it, an' payin' good rent
to Silva. Pretty soon he'll be up to snuff an' buyin' land for himself
from some perishin' American farmer.

"Look at that--though you ought to see it in summer. Not an inch wasted.
Where we got one thin crop, they get four fat crops. An' look at the way
they crowd it--currants between the tree rows, beans between the currant
rows, a row of beans close on each side of the trees, an' rows of beans
along the ends of the tree rows. Why, Silva wouldn't sell these five
acres for five hundred an acre cash down. He gave grandfather fifty
an acre for it on long time, an' here am I, workin' for the telephone
company an' putting' in a telephone for old Silva's cousin from the
Azores that can't speak American yet. Horse-beans along the road--say,
when Silva swung that trick he made more outa fattenin' hogs with 'em
than grandfather made with all his farmin'. Grandfather stuck up his
nose at horse-beans. He died with it stuck up, an' with more mortgag