Of course, Hiram told himself, she would never be like Lettie Bronson or the other girls who attended St. Beris, for instance. But there was something very sweet about Sister's character that Hiram felt and liked. She was almost like a real sister, and more. Hiram went on to his living quarters and made his seed testing boxes, using the canton flannel instead of earth in which to germinate the corn selected from the ears he had bought of Daniel Brown. He made his boxes two inches deep and about thirteen inches wide, allowing for the width of the flannel, which was twenty-seven inches, folded once and taking into consideration the slight shrinkage of the cloth. Hiram considered the flannel better in the seed boxes than either sand, soil, or sawdust. Three or four thicknesses of cloth in the bottom of the box and two thicknesses over the seed, all well dampened, makes the ideal seed testing bed. He washed the new cloth thoroughly and after it was dried and folded in the box as a bed, he marked it off into checkers of two inches each with an indelible pencil. He then soaked the cloth and replaced it in the box. Shelling off and discarding the small and irregular grains from the tips and butts of the ears he intended to test, he selected the kernels to be germinated and placed those from ear number one in the first square on the canton flannel, germ side up, from ear number two in the second square, and so on. Wetting the other strip of flannel he covered the corn, and on top of the box laid a pane of glass that fitted tightly. This method of testing seed enables one to examine the seed at any time without injury to it; the amount of water condensed upon the under side of the glass will usually show whether the cloths are drying out or not. The numbered ears Hiram stacked upon a hanging shelf in one of the laying houses, confident that neither rats nor mice would reach the seed corn in that place. CHAPTER VIII THE BLUEBIRD Lettie Bronson did not come to Sunnyside again that spring, but her father, of course, came frequently during the first weeks of Hiram's incumbency as superintendent of the hillside farm. It had been finally agreed that the shed to be built to house the gang of workmen should be a permanent shelter for certain new farm implements that Hiram and his employer had decided upon. And, in addition, a silo was to be built. "But go easy on the first cost, Hiram," Mr. Bronson continued. "This farm is for sale. An expensive silo will not help sell it any quicker than an old-fashioned silo." "I don't know about that. It is altogether according to the man who buys. But I am not opposed to the old-fashioned stave silo, only it soon rots out." "It will stand five years." "And maybe for twenty," agreed Hiram quickly. "Just according." "How about these new all metal ones?" "They have not been tried out long enough for the reports of their usefulness to be verified."