t before.

"What would you like me to do this morning, Uncle?" she asked the next
day at the breakfast-table. "I think it is time I went to work."

"Going to join the farmerettes?"

"Thinking of it." She could feel, without seeing, Stannard's stare of
astonishment. No one else gave signs of surprise. Stannard, thought
the girl, really hadn't as good manners as his cousins.

Uncle Bob surveyed the trim figure, arrayed in its dark smock and the
shortest of all Elliott's short skirts. If he felt other than wholly
serious he concealed the fact well.

"The corn needs hoeing, both field-corn and garden-corn. How about
joining that squad?"

"It suits me."

Corn--didn't Hoover urge people to eat corn? In helping the corn crop,
she too might feel herself feeding the Belgians.

Gertrude linked her arm in her slender cousin's as they left the
table. "I'll show you where the tools are," she said. "Harry runs the
cultivator in the field, but we use hand-hoes in the garden."

"You will have to show me more than that," said Elliott. "What does
hoeing do to corn, anyhow?"

"Keeps down the weeds that eat up the nourishment in the soil,"
recited Gertrude glibly, "and by stirring up the ground keeps in the
moisture. You like to know the reason for things, too, don't you? I'm
glad. I always do."

It wasn't half bad, with a hoe over her shoulder, in company with
other boys and girls, to swing through the dewy morning to the garden.
Priscilla had joined the squad when she heard Elliott was to be in it,
and with Stannard and Tom the three girls made a little procession. It
proved a simple enough matter to wield a hoe. Elliott watched the
others for a few minutes, and if her hills did not take on as
workmanlike an appearance as Tom's and Gertrude's, or even as
Priscilla's, they all assured her practice would mend the fault.

"You'll do it all right," Priscilla encouraged her.

"Sure thing!" said Tom. "We might have a race and see who gets his row
done first."

"No races for me, yet," said Elliott. "It would be altogether too
tame. I'd qualify for the booby prize without trying. But the rest of
you may race, if you want to."

"Just wait!" prophesied Stannard darkly. "Wait an hour or two and see
how you like hoeing."

Elliott laughed. In the cool morning, with the hoe fresh in her hand,
she thought of fatigue as something very far away. Stan was always a
little inclined to croak. The thing was easy enough.

"Run along, lit