After an early supper I drove to the village with what I had to sell, and returned with two corn-hooks.  At dusk of the following day, Bagley and I had the corn cut and tied up, my helper remarking more than once, “Tell you what it is, Mr. Durham, there hain’t a better eared-out patch o’ corn in Maizeville.”

On the following day I helped Bagley sharpen one of the hooks, and we began to cut the fodder-corn which now stood, green and succulent, averaging two feet in height throughout the field.

CHAPTER XLII

AUTUMN WORK AND SPORT

The barn was now up, and the carpenters were roofing it in, while two days more of work would complete the sty and poultry-house.  Every stroke of the hammer told rapidly now, and we all exulted over our new and better appliances for carrying out our plan of country life.  Since the work was being done by contract, I contented myself with seeing that it was done thoroughly.  Meanwhile Merton was busy with the cart, drawing rich earth from the banks of the creek.  I determined that the making of great piles of compost should form no small part of my fall and winter labor.  The proper use of fertilizers during the present season had given such a marked increase to our crops that it became clear that our best prospect of growing rich was in making the land rich.

During the last week of September the nights were so cool as to suggest frost, and I said to Mousie:  “I think we had better take up your geraniums and other window plants, and put them in pots or boxes.  We can then stand them under a tree which would shelter them from a slight frost.  Should there be serious danger it would take us only a few minutes to bring them into the house.  You have taken such good care of them all summer that I do not intend that you shall lose them now.  Take your flower book and read what kind of soil they grow best in during the winter, and then Merton can help you get it.”

The child was all solicitude about her pets, and after dinner she and Merton, the latter trundling a wheelbarrow, went down to the creek and obtained a lot of fine sand and some leaf-mould from under the trees in the woods.  These ingredients we carefully mixed with rich soil from the flower-bed and put the compound in the pots and boxes around the roots of as many plants as there was room for on the table by the sunny kitchen window.  Having watered them thoroughly, we stood them under a tree, there to remain until a certain sharpness in the air should warn us to carry them to their winter quarters.

The Lima-beans, as fast as the pods grew dry, or even yellow, were picked and spread in the attic.  They could be shelled at our leisure on stormy winter days.

Early in September my wife had begun to give Mousie, Winnie, and Bobsey their lessons again.  Since we were at some distance from a schoolhouse we decided to continue this arrangement for the winter with the three younger children.  I felt that Merton should go to school as soon as possible, but he pleaded hard for a reprieve until the last of October, saying that he did not wish to begin before Junior.  As we still had a great deal to do, and as the boy had set his heart on some fall shooting, I yielded, he promising to study all the harder when he began.