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So they hustled, and when they were far enough ahead Alrass-stem and made it whistle between his thumbs Alice tried, but she could not do that She could pucker her mouth and whistle Royal teased her

“Whistling girls and crowing hens

Always come to some bad ends”

Back and forth across the field they went, all , all afternoon, for three days Then the potatoes were planted

Then Father sowed the grain He sowed a field of wheat for white bread, a field of rye for rye ’n’ injun bread, and a field of oats mixed with Canada peas, to feed the horses and cows next winter

While Father sowed the grain, Almanzo followed hi the seeds into the earth Al time before he could spread the seeds evenly That is hard to do

The heavy sack of grain hung from a strap over Father’s left shoulder As he walked, he took handfuls of grain from the sack With a sweep of his arrains fly froers The sweep of his ar a field every inch of ground had its evenly scattered seeds, nowhere too many or too few

The seeds were too sround, and you could not kno skillful a sower a man was, till the seeds came up Father told Almanzo about a lazy, worthless boy who had been sent to sow a field This boy did not want to work, so he poured the seeds out of his sack and went swi Nobody saw him Afterward he harrowed the field, and no one knehat he had done But the seeds knew, and the earth knew, and when even the boy had forgotten his wickedness, they told it Weeds took that field

When all the grain was sowed, Almanzo and Alice planted the carrots They had sacks full of the little, red, round carrot seeds hanging fro seed-sack Father had thwise, with a hteen inches apart Almanzo and Alice, with the carrot seeds, went up and down the long field, straddling the little furrows

Now the weather was so warood in the air and the soft dirt They dribbled the carrot seeds into the furrows, and with their feet they pushed the dirt over the seeds and pressed it down

Almanzo could see his feet, but of course Alice’s were hidden under her skirts Her hoops rounded out, and she had to pull them back and stoop to drop the seeds neatly into the furrow

Almanzo asked her if she didn’t want to be a boy She said yes, she did Then she said no, she didn’t

“Boys aren’t pretty like girls, and they can’t wear ribbons”

“I don’t care how pretty I be,” Almanzo said “And I wouldn’t wear ribbons anyhow”

“Well, I like to make butter and I like to patch quilts And cook, and sew, and spin Boys can’t do that But even if I be a girl, I can drop potatoes and sow carrots and drive horses as well as you can”