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, when potatoes need hoeing." "But do you like it?" "Oh, yes, in a way. Hoeing potatoes isn't half bad." Elliott opened her lips to say that it wasn't girls' work, remembered that she had made that remark once before, and changed to, "It is hard work, and it isn't a bit interesting." Then Laura asked two questions that left Elliott gasping. "Don't you like to do anything except what is easy? Though I don't know that it is any harder to hoe potatoes for an hour than to play tennis that length of time. And anything is interesting, don't you think, that has to be done?" "Goodness, _no_!" ejaculated Elliott, when she found her voice. "I don't think that at all! Do you, really?" "Why, yes!" Laura laughed a trifle deprecatingly. "I'm not bluffing. I never thought I'd care to spray potatoes, but one day it had to be done, and Father and the boys were needed for something else. It wasn't any harder to do than churning, and I found it rather fun to watch the potato-bugs drop off. I calculated, too, how many Belgians the potatoes in those hills would feed, either directly or by setting wheat free, you know. I forget now how many I made it. I know I felt quite exhilarated when I was through. Trudy helped." "Goodness!" murmured Elliott faintly. For a minute she could find no other words. Then she managed to remark: "Of course every one gardens at home. They have lots at the country club, and raise potatoes and things, and you hear them talking everywhere about bugs and blight and cold pack. I never paid much attention. It didn't seem to be meant for girls. The men and boys raise the things and the wives and mothers can them. That's the way we do at home." "Traditional," nodded Laura. "We divide on those lines here to a certain extent, too; but we're rather Jacks of all trades on this farm. The boys know how to can and we girls to make hay." "The boys _can_?" "Tom put up all our string-beans last summer quite by himself. What does it matter who does a thing, so it's done?" Laura was dressed now, from the crown of her smooth black head to the tip of her white canvas shoes, and a very satisfactory operation she had made of it. Elliott dismissed Laura's last remark, which had not sounded very sensible to her--of course it mattered who did things; why, that sometimes was all that did matter!--and reflected that, country bred though she was, her cousin Laura had an air that many a town girl might have envied. An
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