C. WORKING ONE'S WAY UP

1. DICK AND HIS PEACHES

WALTER E. ANDREWS

Notice that this story is made up of parts that fit together like links in a chain. Try to find the beginning of each new link.

"I want to talk with you about that nephew of yours, William," said Mrs. Waddle to her husband.

Mr. Waddle laid down his newspaper and said, “Well?"
"Dick will be seventeen years old next month.'
""Tisn't his fault, Mandy."

"He's getting to be a young man," Mrs. Waddle declared, paying no attention to this pleasantry. "He's had a good schooling, and he's smart and healthy. It's time he quit this foolishness of puttering around with peach trees; and it's time you quit backing him up in it."

"I?"

"Nobody else. You rented him that five-acre lot, and gave him the option of buying it at the end of six years, didn't you? You lent him forty dollars to buy trees with. And you told him that he could use your team and tools."

Mr. Waddle shuffled his feet uneasily on the porch steps. He looked uncomfortable and guilty.

"You're Dick's uncle," continued his wife. "He's alone in the world, and you're responsible for his bringing up. You ought to squelch his peculiar notions and make him do as other boys of his age do."

"Maybe so. Maybe."

"Other boys hire out as farm hands or clerk in stores, or do something else that's fitting to their age. They don't have queer notions about getting land, planting trees, doing things differently, and being 'independent.'

“Dick's different, that's all," said Mr. Waddle. "He's paying his board, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"He buys his clothes, doesn't he?"

"Yes - lately."

"He's a good, honest boy?"

"Yes, yes."

"He's the best strawberry picker and the smartest peach packer in the neighborhood?"

"Then suppose we let him alone. Maybe he'll surprise us all before he's many years older."

Mr. and Mrs. Waddle were not the only ones who said that Richard Russell certainly was "different." The schoolmaster said it, and the Peachville neighbors unanimously agreed. His oddness" asserted itself in many ways that "went contrary" to the settled notions of the good Michiganders of Peachville township.

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People liked Dick, but they distrusted his "oddness." They admired his frank, honest face, his fidelity to his word, his industry, and his cheerfulness; but they could not quite forgive the fact that he "wasn't just like the other boys." Fruit farmers liked to hire him by the day at picking time because of his deft and conscientious work; but they shook their heads doubtfully when he ventured to suggest an improvement here, a change there, that, in his opinion, would either facilitate the work or render the result more certain.

"Why," said Deacon Pepperton one day to Hank Peters, confidentially, "what do you suppose that Russell fellow wanted me to do last week? He wanted me to let him build a machine that would sort peaches into four different sizes! He called the contraption a 'grader,' and said he'd seen a picture of one in some farm paper."

"Did you let him?"

"No, siree! I wasn't going to have my peaches spoiled by being run through the hopper of a machine. The idea!"

Then Hank Peters told, with many wags of the head, how Richard Russell had once suggested the making of a basketturntable in the peach-packing shed.

"Sounds just like him!" remarked the deacon. "What did he say the thing would do if he did make it?"

"That it would save work and time," answered Hank, disdainfully. "He was working for me that day, fastening on covers. As you know, when one end is fastened, the basket must be lifted up and turned round so that you can get at it to fasten the other end. Well, he worked away an hour or so. Then all of a sudden he said, 'Mr. Peters, I could whittle out a board the size of a basket bottom, nail an edge round the board to hold the basket in place, and mount the board on a pivot so that it would swing just even with the top of the packing table."

"I suppose you could,' said I. 'What of it?'

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'Why,' he said, 'it would save lifting the basket. All I'd have to do would be to set the basket on the pivot board, fasten one end of the cover, swing it round SO and there'd be the other end ready for fastening.'

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'Young man,' I said, 'I'm paying you a dollar and a quarter a day to work. Don't always be looking for easy jobs.'

""I didn't mean it that way,' he answered. 'I was just trying to plan a way that would push the work faster.'

"'Much obliged,' I said, ‘but I'm not paying wages to inventors this year.' And then he shut up.'

The deacon laughed heartily at the story, and ventured to predict that William Waddle would have a time with that boy before he got through.

The peach trees in Richard's orchard had been planted three years. They had grown into thrifty, beautiful trees the pride of Richard's heart and the delight of Richard's eyes. Each spring he plowed the land and pruned the branches. Every ten days throughout the season he harrowed the ground. He studied books on horticulture, subscribed to a horticultural paper, and

kept his eyes and ears open for any information about practical peach culture.

At odd times he "worked out" for the neighbors by the day, thus earning enough money to pay the rent of his land and his living expenses. He refused several flattering offers to work by the month.

"I can't afford it," he said to one of the farmers who asked a reason for the refusal. "If I worked by the month I should have to neglect my trees, and that wouldn't be wise."

The five-acre piece of land that Richard hoped some time to own was valued at seventy-five dollars an acre, and the rent that he paid his uncle was four dollars an acre. The piece lay back from the road, and there were no buildings on it; but the soil was well-drained, high, and sandy — ideal ground for peaches -bordered on three sides by prosperous orchards.

"If you should want more land," William Waddle had said, "you can have the front fifteen acres at the same figure. I'm keeping it for you."

"I'll pay for the five first," Richard had answered. He believed that if he could hold on until the trees were five years old, the first full crop would pay, or nearly pay, for the five acres.

Two years passed. Richard was nineteen. His trees, entering their fifth summer, seemed to promise an excellent crop. When the trees blossomed in the spring the sight was like a vision of promise to the boy.

Early in that same spring Richard bought a spray pump, and at the proper time carefully sprayed all his peach trees. The neighbors laughed, and made jokes about the "squirt gun that would poison all the peaches." In those days the art of spraying fruit trees was in its infancy. Richard had read about spraying, and had written to the State Agricultural Experiment Station for instructions, which he had carefully followed.

Even William Waddle looked dubiously at the squirt gun experiments. "Better go slow," he said to Richard.

"But, uncle, the experiment station people are sure that spraying will prevent the leaf from curling. Last year, you know, one third of the peach crop in this neighborhood was lost by that disease"

"Yes."

"It's an idea that seems worth trying."

"Maybe so. Maybe. I'm not saying anything myself, but your aunt is having seventeen fits!"

Later in the season the dreaded leaf curl attacked almost every peach orchard in the county. The leaves curled up into fantastic shapes, assumed strange colors, and finally dropped from the trees; then many tiny peaches followed the leaves. In Richard's orchard the damage was slight; in the orchards of his neighbors more than one half the crop was lost.

"Have you seen Dick Russell's orchard?" asked Mr. Peters one morning, when he met the deacon on the road. "Yes. Have you?"

"Went through it yesterday."

There was an awkward pause. Then the deacon coughed. "Begins to look," he said, "as if that Russell fellow wasn't such He paused for a word, hesitated, and coughed again. "Yes, it does look so," admitted Hank. "Well, I got to be going. Good morning, deacon! G'long, Bess! G'long!"

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In early August, Richard bought ten dollars' worth of lumber, shingles, and nails, and built in his orchard a small, rough packing shed. Inside the shed he built a packing table, fastening on the table a swinging pivot board such as he had wished to make for Mr. Peters. He also made a rude peach grader on the principle of an inclined double track with openings between the rails.

At the top the openings were as narrow as the diameter of a small peach, and gradually became wider toward the bottom of the incline. The peaches, when poured into a hopper at the top of the tracks, rolled slowly down and dropped through the openings at different stages of the journey, according to size. The small peaches dropped through first, then the medium size, then the large ones. Only the extra large peaches reached the basket at the bottom of the incline. The others fell into one of three canvas receptacles immediately beneath the tracks.

William Waddle whistled softly as he examined this contrivance. "Bruise them much?" he asked.

"Not unless they are picked overripe; and you know peaches shouldn't be picked that way."