That was the written agreement; and Farmer Dole, who was a severe,
hard-working man, began early to see to it that little Ike earned all
that came to him. The boy, who was a little over seven years old, had to
be up and dressed at five o'clock in the morning, fetch wood and water
to the kitchen, help do chores at the barn, run on errands, pull weeds
in the garden, spread the hay swathes in the field with a little fork,
and do a hundred other things, up to the full measure of his strength.
The neighbors soon began to say that little Ike was being worked too
hard. When the old Squire was one of the selectmen, he remonstrated with
Dole, and wrung a promise from him that the boy should have more hours
for sleep, warmer clothes for winter, and three playdays a year; but
Dole did not keep his promise very strictly.
The fall that little Ike was in his eighth year, the threshers, as we
called the men who journeyed from farm to farm to thresh the grain, came
to the old Squire's as usual. While my cousin Halstead was helping to
tend the machine, he got a bit of wheat beard in his right eye.
First Theodora, then Addison, and finally the old Squire, tried to wipe
it out of his eye with a silk handkerchief; but they could not get it
out, and by the next morning Halstead was suffering so much that Addison
went to summon Doctor Green from the village, six miles away.
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