Weevil  cheer  our  bean  crop,
    Weevil  cheer  our  bean  crop,
    Weevil  cheer  our  bean  crop,
    Weevil  cheer  our  bean  crop,  O!”

“Don’t crow too soon,” said Farmer Landsdowne, picking up his sprayer preparatory to taking his departure, “there may be twice as many on to-morrow.”

“I flatly refuse to worry about to-morrow,” said Nyoda, “‘sufficient unto the day is the weevil thereof!’”

Calvin Smalley, working in the vegetable patch in front of the Red House, heard that cheer and paused in his work to look over at the other garden. He was wondering what was so funny about gardening. “I wish,” he sighed, as he turned back to his endless task, “that those girls were my sisters!”

Gladys went into town alone when the last of the strawberries were ripe, for none of the other girls could be spared that day. The squash bugs had descended on the garden and all hands were required on deck to save the squash and melon vines from being eaten alive. On the way she passed Mr. Smalley, driving the identical wreck of a horse he had tried to hire out to the girls. He had a heavy load of vegetables, and the poor, broken down creature would hardly move it from the spot. He started nervously as the machine passed him on the narrow road, and Mr. Smalley pulled him up sharply and brought the whip down on his back with a heavy cut. “Ain’t you used to automobiles yet, you stupid brute?” he growled.

Gladys delivered the eight quarts of extra large berries to Mrs. Davis first. “Wouldn’t you like to stay in town and have lunch with us and go to the theatre afterward?” Mrs. Davis said in such a patronizing tone that Gladys quite started, and then laughed inwardly.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t sold all of my berries yet,” she answered soberly, “and I have to hurry back and help pick bugs.”

“Pick bugs?” exclaimed Mrs. Davis, in a horrified tone.

“Yes,” said Gladys, with a relish, “nice juicy, striped bugs that crunch beautifully when you step on them.”

“Oh, oh,” said Mrs. Davis, putting her hands over her ears. “Give my love to your poor, dear mamma,” she said gushingly, when Gladys was departing. “Tell her she has my fullest sympathy.” As Gladys’s poor, dear mamma was, at that moment, seated on the observation platform of a luxurious railway coach, speeding through the mountains of Washington while Mrs. Davis was obliged to stay in town for the time being, she was not really in as much need of Mrs. Davis’s sympathy as that lady fondly imagined.

Gladys disposed of the remaining berries to other amused or patronizing friends, and then decided to look up a laundress she knew of and get her to come out to Onoway House once in a while to do the heavy washing. The street where the laundress lived was narrow and crowded with children playing in the middle of the road, and progress was rather slow. One little girl in particular made Gladys extremely nervous by running across the street right in front of the machine and daring her to run over her, shaking her fists at her and making horrible grimaces. She got across the street once in safety and then started back again. Just then a small child sprang up from the ground right under the very wheels of the machine and Gladys turned sharply to one side. The fender struck the saucy little girl who was daring her to run over her and she rolled under the car, screaming. Gladys jammed down the emergency brake with a jerk that almost wrenched the machinery of the automobile asunder. White as a sheet she jumped out and picked the girl up. In an instant an angry crowd of women and children had surrounded the machine. “Darn yer!” cried the child shrilly, shaking a dirty fist in Gladys’s face, while the other arm hung limp. “I thought yer didn’t dast run into me.”

“Get into the car,” said Gladys, terrified, “and I’ll take you home.”

“I dassent go home,” shrieked the child, “Old Grady’ll lick the tar out of me if I go home without sellin’ me papers.”

“Then let me take you to the hospital, or somewhere,” said Gladys, anxious to get away from the threatening crowd.

“What’s the matter?” asked one voice after another, as the tenements poured their human contents into the street.

“Ophelia’s run over,” explained a powerful Irish woman, with a shawl over her head, who kept her hand on the handle of the car door. “Lady speedin’ run her down like a dog.” An angry murmur rose from the crowd. Gladys shook in her shoes and wondered if she dared start the car with all those children hanging on the front of it. She looked around helplessly for someone who would help her out of her difficulty. Just then a policeman turned into the street, attracted by the crowd.

“Cheese it, de cop!” screamed a ragged gamin, who stood on the step of the car, and the women and children began to slink into the doorways. Gladys waited until he came up, and then explained the whole matter and asked where the nearest hospital was.

“Can’t blame you for hitting that brat,” said the policeman, “she’s the terror of drivers for two blocks.” Ophelia stuck out her tongue at him. Gladys drove her to the hospital where it was discovered that the left arm was broken below the elbow. Painful as the setting may have been there was “never a whang out of her,” as the doctor remarked, although she hung on tightly to Gladys’s white sleeve with her dirty hand. Her waist was taken off to find the extent of the damage, and Gladys was frightened to see that the other arm was fearfully bruised and scratched, and there was a ring of purple and green blotches around her neck like a collar.

“She must have been thrown down harder than I thought,” said Gladys to the nurse.

“Thrown down nothin’,” answered Ophelia, “Old Grady did that the other day when I threw a stone through the winder.” And she held up the mottled arm where all might see.

“Oh,” said Gladys, with a shudder, “cover it up.” Putting Ophelia into the machine again she drove back to the scene of the accident and entered the squalid tenement in which the child said she lived.

“Won’t Old Grady beat me up though, when she finds I’ve busted me wing,” said Ophelia, as they mounted the rickety stairs. Hardly had she spoken when the door at the head of the stairs flew open and a large, red-faced, coarse-looking woman strode out and shook her fist over the banisters.

“I’ll fix ye fer stayin’ out afther I tell ye ter come in, ye little devil,” she shouted. “I’ll break every bone in yer body. Gimme the money for the papers first.”

“Go chase yerself,” said Ophelia, standing still on the stairs with a spiteful gleam in her eye, “there ain’t no money. I ain’t had time ter peddle this afternoon.”

“What yer mean, no money?” screamed the woman. “Just wait till I get me hands on yer!”

Gladys shrank back against the wall in terror, then collecting herself she thrust Ophelia behind her and faced the angry woman. “Ophelia has had an accident,” she explained. “I ran over her with my machine and broke her arm.” The woman brushed past her and grabbed Ophelia by the shoulder. Overcome with fury at the thought that her household drudge would be of no use to her for several weeks, she boxed her ears again and again, calling her every name she could think of. Finally she let go of her with a push that sent Ophelia stumbling down half a dozen stairs.

“Get out o’ my sight!” she shrieked. “Do yer think I’m going ter house an’ feed a worthless brat that ain’t doin’ nothin’ fer her