“I thought you were not going to crack up the place at all.”

“Neither be I. Take that old arm-chair, and I’ll tell you all about it.  The place looks rather run down, as you have seen.  Old Mr. and Mrs. Jamison lived here till lately.  Last January the old man died, and a good old man he was.  His wife has gone to live with a 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 well filled by the provident old man.  There was ample cellar room, which was also a safeguard against dampness.  Then I went out and walked around the house.  It was all so quaint and homely as to make me feel that it would soon become home-like to us.  There was nothing smart to be seen, nothing new except a barn that had recently been built near one of the oldest and grayest structures of the kind I had ever seen.  The snow-clad mountains lifted themselves about me in a way that promised a glimpse of beauty every time I should raise my eyes from work.  Yet after all my gaze lingered longest on the orchard and fruit-trees that surrounded the dwelling.

“That’s sensible,” remarked Mr. Jones, who followed me with no trace of anxiety or impatience.  “Paint, putty, and pine will make a house in a few weeks, but it takes a good slice out of a century to build up an orchard like that.”