It wasn't all fun, Jack¹ assured her when, soon after dinner, he came toiling³ up the grass path and mounted the porch steps wearily.  
"I never was so tired in my life," he declared. "Gee⁴, I thought I was 'hard' enough—I've been fishing lots since school closed and that isn't a lazy man's work especially if you wade⁵ upstream. I've hiked miles and I've worked in the garden at home; but at this minute I have three hundred and ninety-eight muscles creaking in my machinery⁶ that I never knew before existed."
 
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 recital⁷ 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 briefly⁸. "I'll show you sometime—when I can bend my knees again."
 
Doctor Hugh adroitly⁹ 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 grunt¹⁰. 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 severely¹¹. It was, as Doctor Hugh had said, an entirely¹² 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 license¹³ to grumble¹⁴ when his father suggested that a little weeding would do the garden no harm.
 
It had not occurred to Jack, when he so blithely¹⁵ decided¹⁶ 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 hazy¹⁸ 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.
 
Jack said little, but an undercurrent of friction¹⁹ began to develop between him and Warren though to do him justice Warren was more than ordinarily thoughtful and ready to make every allowance for Jack's inexperience. But naturally the issuing of orders fell to him and he was made responsible for the volume of work accomplished²⁰ each day. Mr. Hildreth permitted no excuses for failure in tasks set and though extremely just he had a shrewd and accurate knowledge of the time required for each chore and the amount of finished work to be turned out each hour.
 
Jack and Richard "hit it off together" very well, too well, in fact; they began to "fool," to skylark and, insensibly, waste time. When Warren interfered²¹ it was in the role of kill-joy, a character he did not fancy. When, on his return from driving a load of tomatoes to the cannery one afternoon, instead of finding filled crates²² ready for a second trip, he discovered that neither boy had picked a tomato and that they had broken several crates and mashed²³ a quantity of ripe tomatoes in good-natured tussling. Warren spoke²⁴ sharply and to the point. He sent Jack to one end of a row and Richard to the other and kept them separated the remainder of the afternoon.
 
The team was another grievance²⁵. Jack was sure he could be trusted to drive Solomon and his mate to the cannery and back and this hauling afforded a welcome break in a monotonous²⁶ day. But Mr. Hildreth flatly refused to allow Jack to handle the horses and either he or Warren made the twice a day trip to the Center.
 
"I'll quit to-morrow," said Jack desperately²⁷, night after night.
 
And in the morning he would decide to stick it out another day.
 
Twice he went to sleep in his chair on the porch of the little white house, waking to find that Mrs. Hildreth and the girls had gone to bed and left Doctor Hugh, reading quietly under the lamp, to keep him company.
 
"Nothing to be ashamed of," said ............