s! It's worth fifty cents now right at the
crib--a hundred and seventy dollars. Hiram! that'll make dad let me go
to the agricultural college."

"What?" cried Hiram, surprised and pleased. "Have you really got that
idea in your head?"

"I been gnawin' on it ever since you talked so last spring," admitted
his friend, rather shyly. "I told father, and at first he pooh-poohed.

"But I kept on pointing out to him how much more you knowed than we
did--"

"That's nonsense, Henry," interrupted Hiram. "Only about some things. I
wouldn't want to set myself up over the farmers of this neighborhood as
knowing so much."

"Well, you've proved it. Dad says so himself. He was taken all aback
when I showed him how you had beat him on the tomato crop. And I been
talking to him about your corn.

"That hit father where he lived," chuckled Henry, "for father's a
corn-growing man--and always has been considered so in this county.

"He watched the way you tilled your crop, and he believed so much
shallow cultivating was wrong, and said so. But he says you beat him
on poor ground; and when I tell him what that lowland figures up, he'll
throw up his hands.

"And I'm going to take a course in fertilizers, farm management, and the
chemistry of soils," continued Henry.

"Just as you say, I believe we have been planting the wrong crops on the
right land! Anyway, I'll find out. I believe we've got a good farm, but
we're not getting out of it what we should."

"Well, Henry," admitted Hiram, slowly, "nothing's pleased me so much
since I came into this neighborhood, as to hear you say this. You get
all you can at the experiment station this winter, and I believe that
your father will soon begin to believe that there is something in 'book
farming', after all."

If it had not been for the hair-hung sword over them, Mrs. Atterson and
Hiram would have taken great delight in the generous crops that had been
vouchsafed to them.

"Still, we can't complain," said the old lady, "and for the first time
for more'n twenty years I'm going to be really thankful at Thanksgiving
time."

"Oh, I believe you!" cried Sister, who heard her. "No boarders."

"Nope," said the old lady, quietly. "You're wrong. For we're going
to have boarders on Thanksgiving Day. I've writ to Crawberry. Anybody
that's in the old house now that wants to come to eat dinner with us,
can come. I'm going to cook the best dinner I ever cooked--and make a
milkpail full of gravy."