"If I was only well
enough, how I should like to help pile up that wood!"

"Dear Cecie!" cried Vinnie, embracing her, "I wish you _were_ well
enough! And I hope you will be some time."

The wood was all disposed of that afternoon, and the boys concluded that
they had had a pretty good time over it.

"Now we can loaf for a whole week, and make a business of it," said Wad.

"There's one more job that ought to be done," said Rufe. "That
potato-patch. We can't keep the pigs out of it, and it's time the
potatoes were dug."

"I s'pose so," said Wad. "Wish we had a hired man."

"It isn't much of a job," said Rufe. "And we don't want to be seen
loafing round, now _she's_ here."

"We can go up in the woods and loaf," said Wad.

"Don't talk silly," said Rufe. "Come, I'll go at the potatoes to-morrow,
if you will. We'll dig, and make Link pick 'em up."

"I was going to shoot some more prairie chickens to-morrow. We've no
other meat for dinner."

"We'll get father to shoot them. Come, Wad, what do you say?"

Wad declined to commit himself to an enterprise requiring so large an
outlay of bone and muscle. All Rufe could get from him was a promise to
"sleep on the potatoes" and say what he thought of them in morning.

The next morning accordingly, before the cattle were turned out of the
yard, Rufe said,--

"Shall we yoke up the steers and take the wagon down into the
potato-patch? We can be as long as we please filling it."

"Yes, we may as well take it down there and leave it," Wad assented; and
the steers were yoked accordingly.

Lord Betterson was not surprised to see the wagon go to the
potato-patch, where he thought it might as well stay during the rest of
the season, as anywhere else. But he _was_ surprised afterward to see
the three boys--or perhaps we should say four, for Chokie was of the
party--start off with their hoes and baskets.

"We are going to let _you_ shoot the prairie chickens this forenoon,"
said Rufe. "You'll find the gun and ammunition all ready, in the
back-room. We are going at the potatoes."

Link went ahead and pulled the tops, and afterward picked up the
potatoes, filling the baskets, which his brothers helped him carry off
and empty into the wagon-box; while Chokie dug holes in the black loam
to his heart's content.

"We might have had a noble crop here," said Rufe, "if it hadn't been for
the weeds and pigs. Wad, we mustn't let the weeds get the start of us so
another year. And we'