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The latter had been a tenant-farmer only, and when his tools and stock and the few household chattels had been sold to pay the debts that had accumulated during his last illness, there was very little money left for Hiram. There was nobody to say him nay when he packed his bag and started for Crawberry, which was the metropolis of his part of the country.
As the dusk dropped, the yellow glare of the fire illuminated the scene. Sister clapped her hands and cried: "Ain't this bully? It beats the Fourth of July celebration in Crawberry. Oh, I'd rather be on the farm than go to heaven!"
He bought some crates and baskets in town, too, and shipped some of the tomatoes to a produce man he knew in Crawberry a man whom he could trust to treat him fairly. During the season that man's checks to Mrs. Atterson amounted to fifty-four dollars. Three times a week the spring wagon went to town with vegetables for the school, the hotels, and their retail customers.
There's forty times more chores to do here than there was back in Crawberry But, thanks be! there ain't no gravy to worry about." "And there ain't no boarders to make fun of me," said Sister, thoughtfully. Then, she announced, after some rumination: "I like pigs better than I do boarders Mis' Atterson." "Well, I should think you would!" exclaimed that lady, tartly. "Pigs has got some sense."
"Why, there are college boys working on our street cars here waiting for some better job to turn up. What chance does a fellow stand who's only got a country school education? "And there isn't any clean fun for a fellow in Crawberry fun that doesn't cost money. And goodness knows I can't make more than enough to pay Mrs.
Atterson she must buy if he was to practically attend to the whole farm for her. Hand-hoeing, in both field and garden crops, is antediluvian. Thus, during this week and a half of preparation, Hiram made ready for the uprooting of Mrs. Atterson from the boarding house in Crawberry to the farm some distance out of Scoville.
"Yet I bet she is in earnest about wanting to know about her folks." And from that time Hiram thought more about Sister's problem himself than he had before. Once, when he went to Crawberry, he went to the charitable institution from which Mother Atterson had taken Sister.
Besides, he had begun to see that his two years in Crawberry had been wasted. "As a hustler after fortune in the city I am not a howling success," mused Hiram. "Somehow, I'm cramped down yonder," and he glanced back at the squalid brick houses below him, the smoky roofs, and the ugly factory chimneys.
The young fellow who said this stood upon the highest point of the Ridge Road, where the land sloped abruptly to the valley in which lay the small municipality of Crawberry on the one hand, while on the other open fields and patches of woodland, in a huge green-and-brown checkerboard pattern, fell more easily to the bank of the distant river.
The "castors" at both ends and in the middle were the ugliest Hiram was sure to be found in all the city of Crawberry. The crockery was of the coarsest kind. The knives and forks were antediluvian. The napkins were as coarse as huck towels. But Mrs. Atterson's food considering the cost of provisions and the charge she made for her table was very good.
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