I'll see you get your interest and your money, too."

"You?" Miss Brown involuntarily took a business attitude,
with her arms akimbo, and eyed the boy.

"Yes, ma'am, me. I ain't so very old, but I know all about the business.
I got all the figures down--how much we raise and what we got last year.
I can fetch them to you so you can see. He is a good farmer, and he will
catch on to the melons pretty quick. We'll do better next year,
and I'll try to keep him from belonging to things and spending money;
and if he won't lend to anybody or start in raising a new kind
of crop just when we get the melons going, he will make money sure.
He is awful good and honest. All the trouble with him is he needs
somebody to take care of him. If Aunt Lizzie had been alive
he never would have lent that dead-beat Richards that money.
He ought to get married."

Miss Brown did not feel called on to say anything.
Tim continued in a judicial way: "He is awful good and kind,
always gets up in the morning to make the fire if I have got
something else to do; and he'd think everything his wife did
was the best in the world; and if he had somebody to take care
of him he'd make money. I don't suppose YOU would think of it?"
This last in an insinuating tone, with evident anxiety.

"Well, I never!" said Miss Brown.

Whether she was more offended or amused she couldn't tell;
and she stood staring at him by the electric light.
To her amazement the hard little face began to twitch. "I didn't