repeated, slowly. "Thanky, miss! it's a onreasonable sort o' word,
'pears ter me." And he bent over his carrots again.

But Hilda did not return to her currant-picking. She was interested in
this freckled, tow-headed boy, wrestling with four-syllabled words while
he worked.

"Why do you study your lesson out here?" she asked, sitting down on a
convenient stump, and refreshing herself with another bunch of white
currants. "Couldn't you learn it better indoors?"

"Dunno!" replied the boy. "Ain't got no time ter stay indoors."

"You might learn it in the evening!" suggested Hilda.

"I can't keep awake evenin's," said the boy, simply. "Hev to be up at
four o'clock to let the cows out, an' I git sleepy, come night. An' I
like it here too," he added. "I can l'arn 'em easier, weedin'; take ten
weeds to a word."

"Ten weeds to a word?" repeated Hilda. "I don't understand you."

"Why," said the boy, looking up at her with wide-open blue eyes, "I take
a good stiff word (I like 'em stiff, like that an--an_ti_cipate feller),
and I says it over and over while I pull up ten weeds,--big weeds, o'
course, pusley and sich. I don't count chickweed. By the time the weeds
is up, I know the word, I've larned fifteen this spell!" and he glanced
proudly at his tattered spelling-book as he tugged away at a mammoth
root of pusley, which stretched its ugly, sprawling length of fleshy
arms on every side.