hadn't I?"

"Help yourself," repeated the boy. "But pickin' 'tater bugs wouldn't
be as bad as _that_, to my mind."

"'Every one to his fancy,
And me to my Nancy.'

as the old woman said when she kissed her cow," quoted Janice,
laughing. "You can have the bugs, Marty."

"Somebody'll have to git 'em, pretty soon, or the bugs'll have the
'taters," declared her cousin. "Say! you'd ought to have somethin'
besides your fingers ter scratch around them plants."

"Yes, and a pair of old gloves, Marty," agreed Janice, ruefully.

"Huh! Ain't that a girl all over? Allus have ter be waited on. I
wisht you'd been a boy cousin--I jest _do_! Then we'd git these
'taters done 'fore night."

"And how about getting the carrots weeded, Marty?" she returned,
laughing at him.

Marty grunted. But when he finished the second row he threw down his
hoe and disappeared through the garden gate. Janice wondered if he had
deserted her--and the potatoes--for the afternoon; but by and by he
returned, bringing a little three-fingered hand-weeder, and tossed on
the ground beside her a pair of old kid gloves--evidently his mother's.

"Oh, thank you, Marty!" cried Janice. "I don't mind working, but I
hated to tear my fingers all to pieces."

"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't that jest like a girl?"

Grudgingly, however, as his interest in Janice was shown, the girl
appreciated the fact that Marty was warming toward her.
Intermittently, as he plodded up and down the potato rows, they
conversed and became better acquainted.

"Daddy has a friend who owns a farm outside of Greensboro, and I loved
to go out there," Janice ventured. "I always said I'd love to live on
a farm."

"Huh!" came Marty's usual explosive grunt. "You'll git mighty tired of
livin' on _this_ one--I bet you!"

"Why should I? You've got horses, and cows, and chickens, and--and all
that--haven't you?"

"Well, we've got a pair of nags that you can plow with. But they ain't
fit for driving. Jim Courteval, who lives up the road a piece, now
_he's_ got some hossflesh wuth owning. But our old crowbaits ain't
nothing."

"Don't you love to take care of them--and brush them--and all that?"
cried the girl, eagerly.

"Not much I don't! I reckon if old Sam and Lightfoot felt a currycomb
once more they'd have a fit. And you ought to see our cow! Gee! Dad
tried to trade her the other day for a stack of fodder, and the man
wouldn't have her. He'll have ter tr