A NEW CHUM
The farm was nearly five miles from the station, and the two big wagons
made slow time with the heavy loads, especially as the roads were still
muddy from a recent downpour. But none of the Camp Fire Girls seemed to
mind the length of the trip.
Now that she was actually out in the heart of it, Bessie found that the
country was not as much like that around Hedgeville as it had seemed to
be from the train windows. The fields were better kept; there were no
unpainted, dilapidated looking houses, such as those of Farmer Weeks and
some of the other neighbors of the Hoovers in Hedgeville whom she
remembered so well.
Neat fences, well kept up, marked off the fields, and, even to Bessie's
eyes, although she was far from being an agricultural expert, the crops
themselves looked better. She spoke of this to Eleanor.
"These aren't just ordinary farms," Eleanor explained. "My father and
some other men who have plenty of money have bought up a lot of land
around here, and they are working the farms, and making them pay just as
much as possible. My father thinks it's a shame for so many boys and
young men, whose fathers own farms, to go rushing off to the city and
work in stores and factories. And they started out to find out why it
was that way. They're business men, you see and as soon as they really
began to think about it they found out what was wrong."
"Why the boys went to the city?" asked Bessie. "I should think that
would be easy to see! It was around Hedgeville. Why, on a farm, the work
never is done. It's work all day, and then get up before daylight to
start again. And even Paw Hoover, who had a good farm, was always saying
how poor he was, and how he wished he could make more money."
"I'll bet he was always buying new land, though," said Eleanor, looking
wise.
"Yes, he was," admitted Bessie. "He always said that if he could get
enough land he'd be rich."
"He probably had too much as it was, Bessie. The trouble with most
farmers is that they don't know how to use the land they have, instead
of that they haven't enough. They don't treat the soil right, and they
won't spend money for good farm machinery and for rich fertilizers. If
they did that, and studied farming, the way men study to be doctors or
lawyers, they'd be better off. How many acres did Paw Hoover have? Well,
it doesn't matter, but I'll bet that my father gets more out of one acre
on his farm than Paw Hoover does out of two on his. You see, the man
who's in charge of the farm went to college to study the business, and
he knows all sorts of things that make a farm pay better."
"Paw Hoover was talking about that once, saying he wished he could send
Jake to college to study farming. But Maw laughed at him, and Jake
couldn't have gone, anyhow. He was so stupid that he never even got
through school there in Hedgeville."
"I suppose he is stupid," said Eleanor. "But after all, Bessie, when a
boy doesn't get along well in school it doesn't always mean that it's
his fault. He may not be properly taught. Sometimes it's the school's
fault, and not the pupil's."
"Other people got along all right," said Bessie. She wasn't quite
prepared to say a good word for Jake Hoover yet. He had caused her too
much trouble in the past.
"Why," she went on, "I used to have to do his lessons for him all the
time. He just wouldn't study at home, Miss Eleanor, and in school he was
so big, and such a bully, that most of the teachers were afraid of him."
"That just shows they weren't good teachers, Bessie. No good teacher is
ever afraid of a bully. She has plenty of people to back her up if she
really needs help. I don't say Jake Hoover is any better than he ought
to be, but from all you tell me, part of his trouble may be because he
hasn't been properly handled. But let's forget him, anyhow. Look over
there. Do you see that white house on top of the hill?"
"Against the sun, so that it's sort of pink where the sun strikes it?"
said Bessie. "Yes, what a lovely place!"
"Well, that's where we're going," said Eleanor.
"But--but that doesn't look a bit like a farmhouse!" said Bessie,
surprised. "I thought--"
"You thought it would be more like the Hoover farm, didn't you?" laughed
Eleanor. "Well, of course that's only our house, and Dad built a nice
one, on the finest piece of land he could find, because we were going to
spend a good deal of time there. There's electric light and running
water in all the rooms and we're just as comfortable there as we would
be in the city."
"It's beautiful, but really, Miss Eleanor, I don't believe most farmers
could afford a place like that, even if they were a lot better off than
Paw Hoover--"
"They could afford a lot of the comforts, Bessie, because they don't
cost half as much as you'd think. The electric light, for instance, and
the running water. The light comes from power that we get from the brook
right on the farm, and it costs less than it does to light the house
in the city. And the water is pumped from the well by a windmill that
cost very little to put up. You see, there's a big tank on the roof,
and whenever there's a wind, the mill is started to running and the
tank is filled. Then there's enough water on hand to last even if there
shouldn't be enough wind to turn the mill for two or three days, though
that's something that very seldom happens. If all the farmers knew how
easily they could have these little comforts, and how cheap they are,
I believe more of them would put in those conveniences."
"Oh, how much easier it would have been at Hoover's if we'd had them!"
sighed Bessie. "There we had to fill the lamps every day, and every bit
of water we used in the house had to be drawn at the well and carried in
pails. It was awfully hard work."
"You see, Maw Hoover didn't have such an easy time, Bessie," said
Eleanor. "She had all that work about the house to do for years and
years. She didn't need to be so mean to you, but, after all, she might
have been nicer if she'd had a pleasanter life. It's easy to be nice and
agreeable when everything is easy, and everything goes right, but when
you have to work hard all the time, if you're a little bit inclined to
be mean, the grind of doing the same thing day after day, year after
year, seems to bring the meanness right out. I've seen lots of instances
of that, and I'm perfectly sure that if I were a farmer's wife, and had
to work like a slave I'd be a perfect shrew and there'd be no living
with me at all."
They turned in from the road now, the wagon in which Bessie and Eleanor
rode in the lead, and came into a pretty avenue that led up a gentle
grade to the ridge on which the house was built. There were trees at
each side to provide shade in the hot part of the day, and for a long
distance on each side of the trees there were well kept lawns.
"My father likes a place to be beautiful as well as useful," said
Eleanor, "so he had those lawns made when we built the house. All the
farmers in the neighborhood thought it was an awful waste of good land,
but since then some of them have come to see that if they ever wanted to
sell their places people would like them better if they were pretty, and
they've copied this place a good deal in the neighborhood.
"We're very glad, because right now Cheney County is the prettiest
farming section anywhere around, and the crops are about the best in the
state, too. So, you see, we seem to have shown them that they can have
pretty places and still make money. And sometimes those lawns are used
for grazing sheep, so they're useful as well as ornamental."
Then in a few minutes they were at the house, and the smiling
housekeeper, whom Eleanor introduced to the girls as Mrs. Farnham,
greeted them.
"Come right in," she said, heartily. "There's supper ready and
waiting--fried chicken, and corn bread, and honey, and creamed potatoes,
and fresh milk, and apple pie and--"
"Stop, stop, do, Mrs. Farnham!" pleaded Eleanor. "You'll make me so
hungry that I won't want to wash my hands!"
And the supper, when they came to it, was just as good to taste as it
was to hear about. Everything they ate, it seemed, came from the farm.
No store goods were ever used on the table in that house. And Bessie,
used to a farm where chickens, except when they were old and tough, were
never eaten, but kept for sale, wondered at the goodness of everything.
That night, although it was not part of the plan, there was an informal
camp fire, held about a blazing pyre of logs. But it did not last long,
for everyone was tired and ready indeed for the signal that Eleanor gave
early by lifting her voice in the notes of the good-night song, _Lay
Me to Sleep in Sheltering Flame_.
Bessie, rather to her surprise, found that she was not to room with
Margery Burton, or Minnehaha, as she had expected, but was to share a
big room, under the roof, with Dolly Ransom, the merry, mischievous
Kiama, as she was known to her comrades of the fire.
"Do you mind if I snore?" asked Dolly promptly, when they were alone
together. "Because I probably shall, and everyone makes such a fuss, and
acts as if it was my fault."
"I'm so tired I shan't even hear you," said Bessie, with a laugh. "Snore
all you like, I won't mind!"
Dolly looked surprised, and pouted a little.
"If you don't mind, there's no use doing it," she said, after a moment,
and Bessie laughed again at this unconscious confession.
"I thought you couldn't help it," she said with a smile.
Dolly looked a little confused.
"I can't sometimes, when I've got a cold," she said. "But they go on so
about it then that I have sometimes tried to do it, just to get even."
"You're a tease, Kiama," said Bessie, merrily, "and I guess it's that
that you can't help. But go ahead and try to tease me as much as you
like. I won't mind."
"Then I won't do it," decided Dolly, suddenly. "It's fun teasing people
when they get mad, but what's the use when they think it's a joke?"
Bessie had seen little of Dolly in the first days of her acquaintance
with the Manasquan Camp Fire, but now, as they appraised one another,
knowing that they were to be very intimate during their stay on the
farm, Bessie decided that she was going to like her new friend very
much.
Not as much as Zara, probably--that would be natural, for Zara was
Bessie's first chum, and her best, and Bessie's loyalty was one of her
chief traits. But she was not the sort of a girl who can have only one
friend. Usually girls who say that mean that they can have only one
close friend at a time, and what happens is that they have innumerable
chums, each of whom seems to be the best while the friendship lasts.
Bessie wanted to be friendly with everyone, and what Eleanor had begun
to tell her about Dolly made her think that perhaps the mischief maker
of the Camp Fire was lonely like herself.
"You're just like me--you haven't any mother or sister, have you?" said
Dolly, after they were both in bed.
Bessie was glad of the darkness that hid the quick flush that stained
her cheeks. Since she had talked with Brack she was beginning to feel
that there was something shameful about her position, although, had she
stopped to think, she would have known that no one who knew the facts
would blame her, even if her parents had behaved badly in deserting her.
And, as a matter of fact, Bessie clung to the belief that her parents
had not acted of their own free will in leaving her so long with the
Hoovers. She thought, and meant to keep on thinking, that they had been
unable to help themselves, and that some time, when good fortune came
to them again, she would see them and that they would make up to her in
love for all the empty, unhappy years in Hedgeville.
"Yes, I'm like you, Dolly," she answered, finally. "I don't know what's
become of my parents. I wish I did."
"I know what's become of mine," said Dolly, her voice suddenly hard--too
hard for so young a girl. "My mother's dead. She died when I was a baby.
And my father doesn't care what becomes of me. He lives in Europe, and
once in a while he sends me money but he doesn't seem to want to see me,
ever."
"Where do you live, Dolly?" asked Bessie.
"Oh, with my Aunt Mabel," said Dolly. "You'll see her when we go back to
town for I'm going to have you come and visit me if you will. She's an
old maid, and she's terribly proper, and if ever I start to have any fun
she thinks it must be wicked, and tries to make me stop. But I fool
her--you just bet I do!"
They were quiet for a minute, and then Dolly broke out again.
"I don't believe Aunt Mabel ever was young!" she said fiercely. "She
doesn't act as if she'd ever been a girl. And she seems to think I ought
to be just as sober and quiet as if I were her age--and she's fifty!
Isn't that dreadful, Bessie!"
"I think you'd have a hard time acting as if you were fifty, Dolly,"
said Bessie, honestly, and trying to suppress a laugh but in vain.
"You don't, do you?"
"Of course not!" said Dolly, giggling frankly, and seemingly not at all
hurt because Bessie did not take the recital of her troubles more
seriously. "Aunt Mabel would like you, I don't mean that you're stiff
and priggish like her, but you seem quieter than most of the girls, and
more serious minded. I bet you like school."
"I do," laughed Bessie. "But I like vacations too, don't you? This is
the first time I ever really had one, though. I've always had to work
harder in summer than in winter before this."
"I think that's dreadful, Bessie. Listen! You know all about farms,
don't you? Let's go off by ourselves to-morrow and explore, shall we?"
"Maybe," said Bessie. "We'll see what we're supposed to do."
"All right! I'm sleepy, too. Bother what we're supposed to do, Bessie!
Let's do what we like. This is vacation, and you're supposed to do what
you like in vacation time. So you see it's all right, anyhow. We can do
what we like and what we're supposed to do both. That's the way it ought
always to be, I think."
"They'd say we ought to want to do what we're supposed to do, you know,
Dolly. That's the safe way. Then you can't go wrong."
"Well--but do you always want to do what you're supposed to do?"
"I'm afraid not. Good-night!"
"Good-night!"