He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

"Well, you see, Miss Taylor, it's like this: farming don't seem to be
your specialty."

The word was often on Miss Taylor's lips, and she recognized it. Despite
herself she smiled again.

"Of course, it isn't--I don't know anything about farming. But what did
I say so funny?"

Bles was now laughing outright.

"Why, Miss Taylor! I declare! Goobers don't grow on the tops of vines,
but underground on the roots--like yams."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, and we--we don't pick cotton stalks except for kindling."

"I must have been thinking of hemp. But tell me more about cotton."

His eyes lighted, for cotton was to him a very real and beautiful thing,
and a life-long companion, yet not one whose friendship had been
coarsened and killed by heavy toil. He leaned against his hoe and talked
half dreamily--where had he learned so well that dream-talk?

"We turn up the earth and sow it soon after Christmas. Then pretty soon
there comes a sort of greenness on the black land and it swells and
grows and, and--shivers. Then stalks shoot up with three or four leaves.