A NEW CHUM


The farm was nearly five miles from the station, and the two big wagons
made slow time with the heavy loads, especially as the roads were still
muddy from a recent downpour. But none of the Camp Fire Girls seemed to
mind the length of the trip.

Now that she was actually out in the heart of it, Bessie found that the
country was not as much like that around Hedgeville as it had seemed to
be from the train windows. The fields were better kept; there were no
unpainted, dilapidated looking houses, such as those of Farmer Weeks and
some of the other neighbors of the Hoovers in Hedgeville whom she
remembered so well.

Neat fences, well kept up, marked off the fields, and, even to Bessie's
eyes, although she was far from being an agricultural expert, the crops
themselves looked better. She spoke of this to Eleanor.

"These aren't just ordinary farms," Eleanor explained. "My father and
some other men who have plenty of money have bought up a lot of land
around here, and they are working the farms, and making them pay just as
much as possible. My father thinks it's a shame for so many boys and
young men, whose fathers own farms, to go rushing off to the city and
work in stores and factories. And they started out to find out why it
was that way. They're business men, you see and as soon as they really
began to think about it they found out what was wrong."

"Why the boys went to the city?" asked Bessie. "I should think that