"But you didn't! You didn't!"
Mrs. Mortimer smiled gratefully.
"Sometimes, even now, I'm amazed that I didn't. But I came of a
hard-headed stock which had been away from the soil long enough
to gain a new perspective. When a thing satisfied my judgment, I
did it forthwith and downright, no matter how extravagant it
seemed. Take the old orchard. Worthless! Worse than worthless!
Old Calkins nearly died of heart disease when he saw the
devastation I had wreaked upon it. And look at it now. There was
an old rattletrap ruin where the bungalow now stands. I put up
with it, but I immediately pulled down the cow barn, the
pigsties, the chicken houses, everything--made a clean sweep.
They shook their heads and groaned when they saw such wanton
waste by a widow struggling to make a living. But worse was to
come. They were paralyzed when I told them the price of the three
beautiful O.I.C.'s--pigs, you know, Chesters--which I bought,
sixty dollars for the three, and only just weaned. Then I hustled
the nondescript chickens to market, replacing them with the White
Leghorns. The two scrub cows that came with the place I sold to
the butcher for thirty dollars each, paying two hundred and fifty
for two blue-blooded Jersey heifers . . . and coined money on the
exchange, while Calkins and the rest went right on with their
scrubs that couldn't give enough milk to pay for their board."
|