“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 mean to mad you,” Tim grunted, with a quiver in his rough voice.  “I’ve been listening to every word you said, and I thought you were so sensible you’d talk over things without nonsense.  Of course I knew he’d have to come and see you Saturday nights, and take you buggy riding, and take you to the theatre, and all such things—­first.  But I thought we could sorter fix it up between ourselves.  I’ve taken care of him ever since Aunt Lizzie died, and I did my best he shouldn’t lend that money, but I couldn’t help it; and I did keep him from marrying a widow woman with eight children, who kept telling him how much her poor fatherless children needed a man; and I never did see anybody I was willing—­before—­and it’s—­ it’s so lonesome without Aunt Lizzie!” He choked and frowned.  Poor Tim, who had sold so many melons to women and seen so much of back doors and kitchen humors that he held the sex very cheap, he did not realize how hard he would find it to talk of the one woman who had been kind to him!  He turned red with shame over his own weakness.

“You poor little chap!” cried Miss Brown; “you poor little sharp, innocent chap!” The hand she laid on his shoulder patted it as she went on:  “Never mind, if I can’t marry your uncle, I can help you take care of him.  You’re a real nice boy, and I’m not mad; don’t you think it.  There’s your uncle now.”

Nelson found her so gentle that he began to have qualms lest his carefully prepared speech should hurt her feelings.  But there was no help for it now.  “I have thought over your kind offer to me, ma’am,” said he, humbly, “and I got a proposition to make to you.  It is your honest due to have your farm, yes, ma’am.  Well, I know a man would like to buy it; I’ll sell it to him, and pay you your money.”