THIS DIDN'T GET BY HIRAM
"I've sure got plenty of time now to look for a job," observed Hiram Strong when he was two blocks away from Dwight's Emporium. "But I declare I don't know where to begin."For his experience in talking with the farmers around the market had rather dashed Hiram's hope of getting a place in the country at once. It was too early in the season. Nor did it look so much like Spring as it had a week ago. Already Hiram had to turn up the collar of his rough coat, and a few flakes of snow were settling on his shoulders as he walked.
"It's winter yet," he mused. "If I can't get something to do in the city for a few weeks to tide me over, I'm afraid I shall have to find a cheaper place to board than at Mother Atterson's."After half an hour of strolling from street to street, however, Hiram decided that there was nothing in that game. He must break in somewhere, so he turned into the very next warehouse.
"Want a job? I'll be looking for one myself pretty soon, if business isn't better," was the answer he got from the first man he approached.
But Hiram kept at it, and got short answers and long answers, pleasant ones and some that were not so pleasant; but all could be summed up in the single monosyllable:
"No!"
"I certainly am a failure here in town," Hiram thought, as he walked through the snow-blown streets. "How foolish I was ever to have come away from the country.
"A fellow ought to stick to the job he is fitted for--and that's sure. But I didn't know. I thought there would be forty chances in town to one in the country.
"And there doesn't seem to be a single chance right now. Why, I'll have to leave Mrs. Atterson's, if I can't find a job before next week is out!
"This mean old town is over-crowded with fellows like me looking for work. And when it comes to office positions, I haven't a high-school diploma, nor am I fitted for that kind of a job.
"I want to be out of doors. Working in a stuffy office wouldn't suit me. Oh, as a worker in the city I am a rank failure, and that's all there is about it!"He went home to supper much more tired than he would have been had he done a full day's work at Dwight's Emporium. Indeed, the job he had lost now loomed up in his troubled mind as much more important than it had seemed when he had desired to change it for another.
Mother Atterson was at home. She hadn't more than taken off her bonnet, however, and had had but a single clash with Chloe in the kitchen. "I smelled it burnin' the minute I set my foot on the front step!" shedeclared. "You can't fool my nose when it comes to smelling burned stuff. "Well, Hiram," she continued, too full of news to remark that he was athome long before his time, "I saw the poor old soul laid away, at least. I wish now I'd got Chloe in before, and gone to see Uncle Jeptha before he was in his coffin.
"But I didn't think I could afford it, and that's a fact. We poor folks can't have many pleasures in this world of toil and trouble!" added the boarding house mistress, to whom even the break of a funeral, or a death- bed visit, was in the nature of a solemn amusement.
"And there the old man went and made his will years ago, unbeknownst to anybody, and me bein' his only blood relation, as you might say, though it was years since I seen him much, but he remembered my mother with love," and she began to wipe her eyes.
"Poor old man! And me with a white-faced cow that I'm afraid of my life of, and an old horse that looks like a moth-eaten hide trunk we to have in our garret at home when I was a little girl, and belonged to my great- great-grandmother Atterson---"And there's a mess of chickens that eat all day long and don't lay an egg as far as I could see, besides a sow and a litter of six pigs that squeal worse than the the switch-engine down yonder in the freight yard---"And they're all to be fed, and how I'm to do it, and feed the boarders, too, I don't for the life of me see!" finished Mrs. Atterson, completely out of breath.
"Whatdoyoumean?"criedHiram,suddenlywakingtothesignificance of the old lady's chatter. "Do you mean he willed you these things?""Of course," she returned, smoothing down her best black skirt. "They go with the house and outbuildings--`all the chattels and appurtenances thereto', the will read.""Why, Mrs. Atterson!" gasped Hiram. "He must have left you the farm.""That's what I said," returned the old lady, complacently. "And what I'm to do with it I've no more idea than the man in the moon.""A farm!" repeated Hiram, his face flushing and his eyes beginning to shine.
Now, Hiram Strong was not a particularly handsome youth, but in his excitement he almost looked so.
"Eighty acres, so many rods, and so many perches," pursued Mrs. Atterson, nodding. "That's the way it reads. The perches is in the henhouse, I s'pose--though why the description included them and not the hens' nests I dunno.""Eighty acres of land!" repeated Hiram in a daze.
"All free and clear. Not a dollar against it--only encumbrances is the chickens, the cow, the horse and the pigs," declared Mrs. Atterson. "If it wasn't for them it might not be so bad. Scoville's an awfully nice place, and the farm's on an automobile road. A body needn't go blind looking for somebody to go by the door occasionally.
