a snake's path.

"Hullo!" said the boy, willing to stop and lean on the hoe handle.
"Don't you want to help?"

"I don't believe I could hoe, Marty," said Janice, doubtfully.

"If you'd been a boy cousin, I wouldn't have minded," grunted Marty.
"He and me could have had some fun."

"Don't you think _I_ can be any fun?" demanded Janice, rather amused by
the frankness of the youth.

"Never saw a gal that was," responded Marty. "Always in the way. Marm
says I got to be perlite to 'em----"

"And is that such a cross?"

"Don't know anything about no cross," growled Marty; "but a boy cousin
that I could lick would ha' been a whole lot more to my mind."

"Oh, Marty! we're not going to quarrel."

"I dunno whether we are or not," returned the pessimistic youth. "Wait
till there's only one piece o' pie left at dinner some day. You'll
have ter have it. Marm'll say so. But if you was a boy--an' I could
lick ye--ye wouldn't dare take it. D'ye see?"

"I'm not so awfully fond of pie," admitted Janice. "And I wouldn't let
a piece stand in the way of our being good friends."

"Oh, well; we'll see," said Marty, grudgingly. "But ye can't hoe, ye
say?"

"I don't believe so. I'd cut off more potato plants than weeds, maybe.
Can't you cultivate your potatoes with a horse cultivator? I see the
farmers doing that around Greensboro. It's lots quicker."

"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got
broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt
these rows. They're too crooked. But then--as the feller
said--there's more plants in a crooked row."

"What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other half
of the garden.

"Weeds--mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always _will_ plant
carrots ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds."

"_I_ know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she
dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows.

"Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me
as though them carrots had just about fainted."

It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little
plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid
as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun
and air from them.

"I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came
back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along,