grow. Beans are about the quickest things.”

“Gee, what a lot you know!” said Ben admiringly. “I didn’t know there was so much to learn about a real garden. I thought that a farmer put his seeds in the ground and they came up, and then after a while he picked his vegetables and sold them.”

“Lots of people think that,” said Jo in a stiff tone of voice as he began to hoe his morning row. “That is why so many city people make jokes about farmers, and think they don’t know anything. Most farmers know very little about the city, but they understand their job of getting food for the city people to eat. I should like to see some of those sneering city fellows plow an acre of ground under the hot sun. A man walks pretty near thirty miles doing such a stretch, and he has to hold his plow nearly a foot in the ground while he does his walking, so as to48 turn over a six or twelve inch furrow. It takes a pretty good man to do that.”

48

“I never laughed at farmers, Jo,” Ann protested mildly. “It is only that I never knew anything about farming.”

“That’s all right,” answered Jo, smiling at her. “I wasn’t thinking about any of you folks. I was calling to mind some of these summer tourists who come through camping by the wayside. We don’t get pestered by them because we’re too far from the main highway, but the farmers nearer the village go well-nigh crazy trying to protect their gardens and fruit from stealing. Why, last summer Les Perkins had all of his pears just ready for picking and shipping to Boston. It took him three years to grow those pears for a perfect crop all free from worms and spots. He had sort of hoped to make something of them at last. He got to his trees one day in time to see a dozen city folks piling into a first-class car, all loaded up with pears. Not only that, but they had shaken the trees and the fruit was all stripped off. What they hadn’t stolen was too bruised to sell.”

“They ought to have been arrested for that!” Ann exclaimed breathlessly.

“Yes.” Jo laughed half-heartedly. “Catch ’em if you can. I caught one of them stealing Pete Simonds’ raspberries. He had a bunch of kids with him. I heard him tell ’em to pick the ripe ones and throw the green ones away. They were stripping49 the bushes. I told them to get out, but the man only laughed and said that all berries were common property.”

49

“What did you do then?” 

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