Having been reminded of Sister, Hiram took mental note that the girl whom he had first known as the boarding house slavey in Mother Atterson's kitchen had never in her life dressed anything like Lettie Bronson. Fine feathers do not always make fine birds; but the feathers help! Lettie chattered as Hiram helped her over the muddy spots in the road to the cottage where Miss Pringle lived. The woman welcomed Lettie vociferously. To Hiram she said, with a smirk: "Now, don't forget, Mr. Strong, to come over to dinner when Abigail blows the horn." Hiram saw Lettie's dancing eyes and he could not keep from blushing when Miss Pringle was so urgent and significant in both look and speech. "I guess Yancey Battick isn't so far out of the way, after all," the young fellow muttered as he went to rejoin Mr. Bronson. "Miss Pringle does rather work on a modest fellow. Lettie Bronson's got the laugh on me, all right." Mr. Bronson had been going through the poultry houses and Hiram caught him at the house in which he thought to set up housekeeping. "Perhaps that is a good idea, Hiram," said the gentleman thoughtfully. "I haven't told you what I intend to do here, have I?" "Only that you intend to farm it," the boy replied with a smile. "You are to do that, my boy, for me," rejoined Mr. Bronson. "I expect you to bring this farm into such a state of fertility in a few years that I can sell it at a big profit." "That sounds like a big contract, Mr. Bronson," said Hiram, shaking his head thoughtfully. "You're equal to it, my boy!" declared Bronson, confidently. "Now, is this the hut you think you can camp in?" "I can make myself comfortable here for a while--until the spring work really opens, at any rate." "All right. That suits me. We'll run down to the store at the Forks before I go back to Plympton and buy provisions, bedding and cooking utensils for you." "No need to go to any great expense," put in Hiram. "The things I buy will all come in handy later. And that brings me around to what I started to say before, Hiram. It does not pay me to farm this place so far from my headquarters. My other farms are right around Plympton. I can move my tractor and my reapers and my thrashing machine and hay-balers from farm to farm in my Plympton string of places. But Sunnyside is too far away from headquarters to send over many of the machines, unless it is the thrasher. That is why I had you look at the farm machinery on your way out here." Hiram merely nodded. "My idea," pursued the man, "is to put Sunnyside Farm in good shape and then sell it at a profit to some man who wants a 'gentleman's farm'--you know, catch one of these city men who wants to retire to the country; the kind the farmers say have more money than brains." "I know," chuckled Hiram, remembering what Battick had said about Mr. Stephen Bronson himself. "Sometimes those gentlemen farmers show the old timers a thing or two."