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"Any trade doing here?" he asked phlegmatically, designating the village in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the labourer did not understand him, he added, "Anything in the hay-trussing line?" The turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. "Why, save the man, what wisdom's in him that 'a should come to Weydon for a job of that sort this time o' year?"
In order to attain this improved efficiency the most important practical aid is piecework. This has done much even in agriculture: the turnip-hoer by the acre earns more, while he does his work at his own time with more comfort to himself than the old day-labourer.
"Tim, you are a turnip-hoer!" he said, with warm admiration in his tone, "and what's more, Tim, you're a sport. I'd like to handle you in something big. You will make a man yet." Tim's whole face flushed a warm red under the coat of freckles. For a time he stood silently contemplating the turnips, then with difficulty he found his voice. "It was you done it," he said, choking over his words.
"I say, Scotty!" said Perkins, coming up and casting a critical eye along Cameron's last drill, "you're going to make a turnip-hoer all right." "I've got a good teacher, you see," cried Cameron. "You bet you have," said Perkins. "I taught Tim myself, and in two or three years he'll be almost as good as I am, eh, Tim!" "Huh!" grunted Tim, contemptuously, but let it go at that.
For Tim, too, it had been a notable day. He had achieved the greatest ambition of his life in beating the best turnip-hoer on the line, and he, too, had found what to a boy is a priceless treasure, a man upon whom he could lavish the hero worship of his soul. It was haying time.
"Tim's got a little too perky because I let him get ahead of me one night in a drill of turnips." "Yeh done yer best, didn't he, Webster?" cried Tim with indignation. "Well, he certainly was making some pretty big gashes in them drills," said Webster slowly. "Oh, get out!" replied Perkins. "Though all the same Tim's quite a turnip-hoer," he conceded. "Hello!
On the way back to the field after supper Cameron observed that Tim was in a state of suppressed excitement and it dawned upon him that the hour of his challenge of Perkins' supremacy as a turnip-hoer was at hand. "I say, Tim, boy!" he said earnestly, "listen to me. You are going to get after Perkins this evening, eh?" "How did you know?" said Tim, in surprise. "Never mind!
It was Tim's ambition to be the first turnip-hoer of his district, and toward this end he had striven both last season and this with a devotion that deserved, if it did not achieve, success. Quietly he had been patterning himself upon that master artist, Perkins, who for some years had easily held the championship for the district.
Turnip-hoeing is an art, a fine art, demanding all the talents of high genius, a true eye, a sure hand, a sensitive conscience, industry, courage, endurance, and pride in achievement. These and other gifts are necessary to high success. Not to every man is it given to become a turnip-hoer in the truest sense of that word.
But as they approached the village sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their ears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from view by foliage. When the outlying houses of Weydon-Priors could just be described, the family group was met by a turnip-hoer with his hoe on his shoulder, and his dinner-bag suspended from it. The reader promptly glanced up.
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