daughter. By the will I was app'inted executor and trustee. I've
fixed on a fair price for the property, and I'm goin' to hold on
till I get it. There's twenty acres of plowable land and orchard,
and a five-acre wood-lot, as I told you. The best part of the
property is this. Mr. Jamison was a natural fruit-grower. He had a
heap of good fruit here and wouldn't grow nothin' but the best. He
was always a-speerin' round, and when he come across something extra
he'd get a graft, or a root or two. So he gradually came to have the
best there was a-goin' in these parts. Now I tell you what it is,
Mr. Durham, you can buy plenty of new, bare places, but your hair
would be gray before you'd have the fruit that old man Jamison
planted and tended into bearing condition; and you can buy places
with fine shade trees and all that, and a good show of a garden and
orchard, but Jamison used to say that an apple or cherry was a
pretty enough shade tree for him, and he used to say too that a tree
that bore the biggest and best apples didn't take any more room than
one that yielded what was fit only for the cider press. Now the
p'int's just here. You don't come to the country to amuse yourself
by developin' a property, like most city chaps do, but to make a
livin'. Well, don't you see? This farm is like a mill. When the
sun's another month higher it will start all the machinery in the
apple, cherry, and pear trees and the small fruits, and it will turn
out a crop the first year you're here that will put money in your
pocket."

Then he named the price, half down and the rest on mortgage, if I so
preferred. It was within the limit that my means permitted.

I got up and went all over the house, which was still plainly
furnished in part. A large wood-house near the back door had been