Doctor Hugh tossed him an extra sofa cushion and Jack stuffed it behind his back as he sat in one of the comfortable wicker chairs. "Where's Richard and Warren?" demanded Sarah. "I want to tell them about greasing the chickens. Jack, did you ever grease chickens?" "Now look here, Sarah," protested Doctor Hugh hastily, "we've listened to the unsavory details of that process once and not even for Jack's sake can we go through it again. Besides, Jack has a recital of his own; you come sit with me and we'll listen to an agricultural lecture." Sarah and Shirley both rushed to accept the invitation and after some skirmishing managed to squeeze into the one big chair. "Warren and Richard have gone down to the brook," reported Jack. "Mr. Hildreth thinks someone from town is gigging there nights and they want to keep a watch. I haven't enough ambition to catch a worm, let alone a gigger." "What's gigging?" cried Sarah, twisting about so that she placed her feet in Rosemary's lap. "Gigging is fishing at night," said Jack briefly. "I'll show you sometime--when I can bend my knees again." Doctor Hugh adroitly shifted the wandering feet by turning Sarah back to her original position. "The first day is always the hardest," he said encouragingly. "You will live through to-morrow, if that's any comfort, Jack." "Well, of course, I'm not complaining," Jack declared. "I don't expect to pick roses--ouch!--and I won't grunt. But that tomato field must be twenty miles long!" Rosemary played for him presently and Mrs. Willis brought out the drop cakes she had "saved" for him, and before it was nine o'clock--his self-imposed bed-time--Jack felt more cheerful in spirit if not in muscle. But the days that followed tested his spirit severely. It was, as Doctor Hugh had said, an entirely new experience for him to work for anyone else and to work straight through a hot summer day with a brief noon hour and no free time planned. There were even a number of chores to be done after supper. "Vacation" to Jack had hitherto meant long, cloudless days with leisure to read lazily in the hammock, or go swimming when he pleased and license to grumble when his father suggested that a little weeding would do the garden no harm. It had not occurred to Jack, when he so blithely decided to hire out to Mr. Hildreth, that he was contracting to give six days of labor--and part of the seventh--as a week's work; he had not thought much about it, but somewhere in the back of his mind there had been a hazy scheme of affairs that included a day or two off, when it should be convenient for him--free days which he would spend fishing with Doctor Hugh and "playing around" with Rosemary and Sarah and Shirley. He was surprised to find that fishing and kindred sports had no place on Warren and Richard's schedule; work was a serious thing to them and in their experience money was not to be easily earned.