“I’d like to have you help me hayin’. My hired man is sick, and he’s left me in a hole. It’s goin’ to rain, and----”
“Going to rain?” repeated Carl, in surprise, as he looked up at the nearly cloudless sky.
“Yes. It don’t look like it, I know, but old Job Hagar say it’ll rain before night, and what he don’t know about the weather ain’t worth knowin’. I want to get the hay on this meadow into the barn, and then I’ll feel safe, rain or shine.”
“Yes, I am pretty strong,” said Carl, complacently.
Carl gave a spring and cleared the fence, landing in the hay field, having first thrown his valise over.
“You’re pretty spry,” said the farmer. “I couldn’t do that.”
“No, you’re too heavy,” said Carl, smiling, as he noted the clumsy figure of his employer. “Now, what shall I do?”
“Take that rake and rake up the hay. Then we’ll go over to the barn and get the hay wagon.”
The farmer pointed across the fields to a story-and-a-half farmhouse, and standing near it a good-sized barn, brown from want of paint and exposure to sun and rain. The buildings were perhaps twenty-five rods distant.
“Are you used to hayin’?” asked the farmer.
“Well, no, not exactly; though I’ve handled a rake before.”
Carl’s experience, however, had been very limited. He had, to be sure, had a rake in his hand, but probably he had not worked more than ten minutes at it. However, raking is easily learned, and his want of experience was not detected. He started off with great enthusiasm, but after a while thought it best to adopt the more leisurely movements of the farmer. After two hours his hands began to blister, but still he kept on.
“I have got to make my living by hard work,” he said to himself, “and it won’t do to let such a little thing as a blister interfere.”
When he had been working a couple of hours, he began to feel hungry. His walk, and the work he had been doing, sharpened his appetite till he really felt uncomfortable. It was at this time--just twelve o’clock--that the farmer’s wife came to the front door and blew a fish horn so vigorously that it could probably have been heard half a mile.
“The old woman’s got dinner ready,” said the farmer. “If you don’t mind takin’ your pay in victuals, you can go along home with me, and take a bite.”