Both _The Man from Everywhere_ and Maria Maxwell
have made him good offers for his farm, _The Man's_ being the first! Now
he had fully determined to sell to _The Man_, when Maria's kindness
during his illness not only turned him in her favour, but gave him an
attachment for the place, so that now he doesn't really wish to sell at
all! It is this mental perturbation, in his very slow nature, that is,
I believe, keeping him an invalid!
_What_ Maria wants of the farm neither Bart nor I can imagine. She has a
little property, a few thousand dollars, enough probably to buy the farm
and put it in livable repair, but this money we thought she was saving
for the so-called rainy day (which is much more apt to be a very dry
period) of spinsterhood! Of course she has some definite plan, but
whether it is bees or boarders, jam or a kindergarten, we do not know,
but we may be very sure that she is not jumping at random. Only I'm a
little afraid, much as I should like her for a next-door neighbour,
that, with her practical head, she would insist upon making hay of the
lily meadow!
"Straying away again from the horticultural to the domestic things," I
hear you say.
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