Island Corso talks with, and he doesn’t say very much to me. I’ve seen the boy, of course, but I don’t know if he can speak English or not, I’ve never heard him.”

“He’s a nice looking boy,” Mrs. Fenton put in.

“Ever since they came your aunt has longed to get her motherly hands on him,” Mr. Fenton laughed.

“He needs a woman to look after him, see that he gets proper food and plenty of it. He’s as thin as a stick, and I know he was sick this spring. I did make Corso take some puddings and jellies to him,” she announced.

“They sound like an interesting pair,” Jim remarked.

“Well, they are, but they mind their own business, and we Vermonters mind ours. How about it, light meat or dark, Jim?”

“Dark, please.”

“What is the boy doing with the mud hole?” Bob wanted to know, for a mud hole didn’t sound very promising.

“I don’t know what it will be like when he gets finished but I’m keen to see. It’s a strip about two and a half acres wide, and five long, that has always been a dead loss for cultivation. It comes between my alfalfa meadow and the garden; dips down low and toward the middle is quite a hole. The place catches all the rain and hangs on to it all through the hottest months. I had an expert here to drain it several years ago, he sunk some pipes, and although he did get the water off, more came back inside of a few weeks, and it was full after the first rain storm. The land is very fertile, and if I could use it, I would raise bumper crops.”

“Shame you can’t.”

“Yes, it is. Corso came to me early this spring, some weeks ago, and asked if I would rent it to him, and permit him to dig and do anything he wanted to with it. He assured me he would do it no harm, nor the surrounding patches. I told him it wasn’t good for anything, but he seemed to want it, so I let him have it. He and the boy spend a great deal of time there, and they have hauled a lot of rocks from the shore. You probably noticed the edge of the lake, except around the cliffs, is all small flat stones, not very brittle, but not so soft as soap-stone.”

“Sure, we were looking at them last night. Some have pink and white streaks, like marble, and are pretty. I’d like to send a box to Mom for the garden walks. She’d be pleased to pieces to have them.”

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