, 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