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Updated: June 9, 2025
He was as up-to-date in farming lore now, if not in actual practise, as he had been when he left the country to try his fortune in Crawberry. Beyond the place where the branch turned back upon itself and hid its source in the thicker timber, Hiram saw that the fields were open on both sides of this westerly line of the farm. "Who's our neighbor over yonder, Henry?" he asked.
Daniel Dwight's Emporium, the general store was called, and it was in a very populous part of the town of Crawberry. Old Daniel was a driver, he seldom had clerks enough to handle his trade properly, and nobody could suit him. As general helper and junior clerk, Hiram Strong had remained with the concern longer than any other boy Daniel had hired in years.
He had made up his mind that, if possible, he would not take another job in town. "And I can see pretty plainly that I've got about through at the Emporium," he thought, as he approached the open space devoted by the City of Crawberry to a market for the truckmen and farmers who drove in with their wares from the surrounding country. At this time of day the bustle of market was over.
Atterson declared they were all celery mad. "Whatever will you do with so much of the stuff, I haven't the least idee, Hiram. Can you sell it all? Why, it looks to me as though you had set out enough already to glut the Crawberry market." "And I guess that's right," returned Hiram. "Especially if I shipped it all at once." But he was aiming higher than the Crawberry market.
"I vum!" she exclaimed, sitting down for the first time in years "at the first table." "If this don't beat Crawberry and them boarders, I'm crazy as a loon. Pour the coffee, Sister and don't be stingy with the milk. Milk's only five cents a quart here, and it's eight in town. But, gracious, child! sugar don't cost no less." Old Lem Camp sat beside Hiram, as he had at the boarding-house table.
Hiram brought in a few bunches for their dinner on Saturday the first fruits of the garden. "Now, I dunno why it is," said Mrs. Atterson, complacently, after setting her teeth in the first radish and relishing its crispness, "but this seems a whole lot better than the radishes we used to buy in Crawberry.
And he found himself staring straight into a long mirror which reflected both himself and the laughing Mr. Bronson. "Hiram Strong!" spoke the Westerner, admonishingly, "why didn't you tell me long ago that you were the lad who turned my horses out of the ditch that evening back in Crawberry?" "Why why " "His fatal modesty," laughed Lettie, appearing and clapping her hands.
Atterson sat up very primly in her best silk, holding a parasol and wearing a pair of lace mits that had appeared on state occasions for the past twenty years, at least. Sister was growing like a weed, and it was hard to keep her skirts and sleeves at a proper length. But she was an entirely different looking girl from the boarding house slavey whom Hiram remembered so keenly back in Crawberry.
Bronson would be the one to show him the way out of the backwater of Crawberry. Hiram had not forgotten how terribly disappointed he had been when he could not find the gentleman's card in the sewer excavation. And later, when Mr. Bronson had suggested that he leave Mrs. Atterson and come to him to work, Hiram feared that he had missed an opportunity that would never be offered him again.
He used a very little commercial fertilizer in each box, and planted some of the seeds he had bought in Crawberry at an agricultural warehouse on Main Street. Mrs. Atterson had expressed the hope that he would put in a variety of vegetables for their own use, and Hiram had followed her wishes.
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