That same day I telephoned the Agricultural Implement Company to send me another wagon, with harness and equipment for the team.  The veterinary surgeon reported that he had a span of mares for me to look at, but I was too much engaged that day to inspect the team, and promised to do so on the next.

When I reached home, Polly said she had found nothing in the way of a general housework girl for the country.  She had seen nine women who wished to do all other kinds of work, but none to fit her wants.

“What do they come for if they don’t want the place we described?  Do they expect we are to change our plans of life to suit their personal notions?” she asked.

“It’s hard to say what they came for or what they want.  Their ways are past finding out.  We will put in another ‘ad.’ and perhaps have better luck.”

Wednesday, the 7th, I went to see the new team.  I found a pair of flea-bitten gray Flemish mares, weighing about twenty-eight hundred pounds.  They were four years old, short of leg and long of body, and looked fit.  The surgeon passed them sound, and said he considered them well worth the price asked,—­$300.  I was pleased with the team, and remembered a remark I had heard as a boy from an itinerant Methodist minister at a time when the itinerant minister was supposed to know all there was to know about horse-flesh.  This was his remark:  “There was never a flea-bitten mare that was a poor horse.”  In spite of its ambiguity, the saying made an impression from which I never recovered.  I always expected great things from flea-bitten grays.

The team, wagon, harness, etc., added $395 to the debit account against the farm.  Polly secured her girl,—­a green German who had not been long enough in America to despise the country.

“She doesn’t know a thing about our ways,” said Polly, “but Mrs. Thompson can train her as she likes.  If you can spend time enough with green girls, they are apt to grow to your liking.”

On Thursday I saw Anderson and the new team safely started for the farm.  Then Polly, the new girl, and I took train for the most interesting spot on earth.

Soon after we arrived I lost sight of Polly, who seemed to have business of her own.  I found the mason and his men at work on the cellar wall, which was almost to the top of the ground.  The house was on wheels, and had made most of its journey.  The house mover was in a rage because he had to put the house on a hole instead of on solid ground, as he had expected.  “I have sent for every stick of timber and every cobbling block I own, to get this house over that hole; there’s no money in this job for me; you ought to have dug the cellar after the house was placed,” said he.

I made friends with him by agreeing to pay $30 more for the job.  The house was safely placed, and by Saturday night the foundation walls were finished.

Sam and Zeb had made a good beginning on the ploughing, the teams were doing well for green ones, and the men seemed to understand what good ploughing meant.  Thompson and Johnson had spent parts of two days in the potato patches in deadly conflict with the bugs.