“Ridiculous! He was just as well able to do the tasks that he had learned to do mechanically as he had been any time for the previous twenty years. He had worked in that office forty years, and more, you understand. “That's the worst thing about a corporation of that kind--it has no thought beyond its 'rules.' Old Mr. Bundy remembered Lem--that's all. If he hadn't so much stock in the concern they'd turn him off, too. I expect he knows it and that's what softened his heart to Old Lem. “Now, let Lem take hold of whatever he can do, and git interested in it,” declared the practical Mrs. Atterson, “and he'll show you that there's work left in him yet. Yes-sir-ree-sir! And if he'll work in the open air, all the better for him.” There was plenty for everybody to do, and Hiram would not say the old man nay. The seed boxes needed a good deal of attention, for they were to be lifted out into the air on warm days, and placed in the sun. And Old Lem could do this--and stir the soil in them, and pull out the grass and other weeds that started. Hiram had planted early cabbage and cauliflower and egg-plant in other boxes, and the beets were almost big enough to transplant to the open ground. Beets are hardy and although hair-roots are apt to form on transplanted garden beets, the transplanting aids the growth in other ways and Hiram expected to have table-beets very early. In the garden itself he had already run out two rows of later beets, the width of the plot. Bunched beets will sell for a fair price the whole season through. Hiram was giving his whole heart and soul to the work--he was wrapped up in the effort to make the farm pay. And for good reason. It was “up to him” to not alone turn a profit for his employer, and himself; but he desired--oh, how strongly!--to show the city folk who had sneered at him that he could be a success in the right environment. Besides, and in addition, Hiram Strong was ambitious--very ambitious indeed for a youth of his age. He wanted to own a farm of his own in time--and it was no “one-horse farm” he aimed at. No, indeed! Hiram had read of the scientific farming of the Middle West, and the enormous tracts in the Northwest devoted to grain and other staple crops, where the work was done for the most part by machinery. He longed to see all this--and to take part in it. He desired the big things in farming, nor would he ever be content to remain a helper. “I'm going to be my own boss, some day--and I'm going to boss other men. I'll show these fellows around here that I know what I want, and when I get it I'll handle it right!” Hiram soliloquized. “It's up to me to save every cent I can. Henry thinks I'm niggardly, I expect, because I wouldn't go to town Saturday night with him. But I haven't any money to waste. “The hundred I'm to get next Christmas from Mrs. Atterson I don't wish to draw on at all. I'll get along with such old clothes as I've got.”