o go over every acre of it
carefully and find exactly what can be expected of it. There may be
nothing of any value in a mineral way, but as I go I am going to make
soil tests, and then put it all down on a complete map and figure out
just what your Uncle Tucker ought to plant in each place for years to
come. It will kill a lot of time, and then it might be doing something
for you dear people, who have taken a miserable, cross invalid of a
stranger man in out of the wet and made a well chap of him again.

"Do you know what you have done for me? That day when I had tramped
over from Boliver just to get away from the Citizens' Hotel and myself
and perched upon Mr. Alloway's north lot fence like a miserable
funeral crow, I had reached my limit, and my spirit had turned its
face to the wall. I had been down South six weeks and couldn't see
that I felt one bit stronger. I had just heard of this copper
expedition from one of the chaps, who had written me a heedlessly
exultant letter about it, and I was down and out and no strength left
to fight. I was too weak to take it like a man, and couldn't make up
my mind to cry like a woman, though I wanted to. Just as it was at its
worst your Uncle Tucker appeared on the other side of the fence, and
when he looked at me with those great, heaven-big eyes of his I fell
over into his arms with a funny, help-has-come dying gasp. As you
know, when I woke I was anchored in the middle of that puffy old
four-poster in my room under the blessed roof of the Briars and you
were pouring something glorious and hot down my throat, while the
wonderful old angel-man in the big gray hat, who had got me out in the
field, was flapping his wings around on the other side of the pillows.
I went to sleep under your very hands--and I haven't waked up
yet--except in ugly, impatient ways. I never want to."

"I wonder what you would be like--awake?" said Rose Mary softly, as
she gently lowered the head of young Peter down into the hollow of her
arm, where, in close proximity to Shoofly's, he nodded off into the
depths. "I think I'm afraid to try waking you. I'm always so happy
when Aunt Viney has snuffed away her asthma with jimson weed and got
down on her pillow, and I have rubbed all her joints; when the General
has said his prayers without stopping to argue in the middle, and
Uncle Tucker has finished his chapter and pipe in bed without setting
us all on fire, that I regard people asleep as in a most blesse