"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt these rows. They're too crooked. But then--as the feller said--there's more plants in a crooked row." "What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other half of the garden. "Weeds--mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always _will_ plant carrots ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds." "_I_ know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows. "Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me as though them carrots had just about fainted." It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun and air from them. "I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along, hadn't I?" "Help yourself," repeated the boy. "But pickin' 'tater bugs wouldn't be as bad as _that_, to my mind." "'Every one to his fancy, And me to my Nancy.' as the old woman said when she kissed her cow," quoted Janice, laughing. "You can have the bugs, Marty." "Somebody'll have to git 'em, pretty soon, or the bugs'll have the 'taters," declared her cousin. "Say! you'd ought to have somethin' besides your fingers ter scratch around them plants." "Yes, and a pair of old gloves, Marty," agreed Janice, ruefully. "Huh! Ain't that a girl all over? Allus have ter be waited on. I wisht you'd been a boy cousin--I jest _do_! Then we'd git these 'taters done 'fore night." "And how about getting the carrots weeded, Marty?" she returned, laughing at him. Marty grunted. But when he finished the second row he threw down his hoe and disappeared through the garden gate. Janice wondered if he had deserted her--and the potatoes--for the afternoon; but by and by he returned, bringing a little three-fingered hand-weeder, and tossed on the ground beside her a pair of old kid gloves--evidently his mother's. "Oh, thank you, Marty!" cried Janice. "I don't mind working, but I hated to tear my fingers all to pieces." "Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't that jest like a girl?" Grudgingly, however, as his interest in Janice was shown, the girl appreciated the fact that Marty was warming toward her. Intermittently, as he plodded up and down the potato rows, they conversed and became better acquainted. "Daddy has a friend who owns a farm outside of Greensboro, and I loved to go out there," Janice ventured. "I always said I'd love to live on a farm." "Huh!" came Marty's usual explosive grunt. "You'll git mighty tired of livin' on _this_ one--I bet you!" "Why should I? You've got horses, and cows, and chickens, and--and all that--haven't you?"