"What's he farming for?" asked Abner, left behind with Medora.

"Sentiment," she replied. "He was born down there, and has never wanted
to let the old place go. Do you think any the worse of him for that?"

Whyland had come to fetch the men and to show them his model farm. They
spent the forenoon in going over this expensive place. Bond gave vent to
all the "oh's" and "ah's" that indicate the perfect visitor. Abner took
their host's various amateurish doings in glum silence. It was all very
well to indulge in these costly contraptions as a pastime, but if the man
had to get his actual living from the soil where would he be? Almost
anybody could stand on two legs. How many on one?

"Do you make it pay?" Abner asked bluntly.

"Pay? I'm a by-word all over the county. Half the town lives on my lack
of 'gumption.'"

"H'm," said Abner darkly. He was as far as ever from hitting it off with
this smiling, dapper product of artificial city conditions.

"I came across some of your Readjusters the other day," observed Whyland,
at the door of his hen-house--a prodigal place with a dozen wired-in
"runs" for a dozen different varieties of poultry: "Leghorns, Plymouth
Rocks, Jerseys, Angoras, Hambletonians and what not," as Bond
irresponsibly remarked. "They say they haven't been seeing much of you
lately."

Abner frowned. Whyland, he felt, was trying to put him at a disadvantage.