"No Northerners have," she said, warming to her theme. "I wish I could set some of them to scrubbing orange-trunks with soap-and-water and spraying acre after acre, as we do, in a wild race to keep up with the pests, knowing all the time that some careless grove owner next door may let the rust mite or the black fly get the better of his grove and let it drift over into ours. Then there's always the chance that a grove may get so infected that the government will order it destroyed,--wiped out .... I've been talking just about the citrus fruits, the grapefruit and the tangeloes and oranges and all that. Pretty much the same thing applies to all our crops down here. We've as many blights and pests and weather-troubles as you have in the North. And now and then, even in Dade County, we get a frost that does more damage than a forest fire." As she talked they passed out of the grapefruit grove, and came to a plantation of orange trees. "These are the joy of Milo's heart," she said with real pride, waving her little hand toward the well-ranked lines of blossoming and bearing young trees. "Last year he cleared up from this five-acre plot alone more than--" "Excuse me," put in Gavin. "I don't mean to be rude. But since he's made such a fine grove of it and takes such pride in its looks, why doesn't he send a man or two out here with a hoe, and get rid of that tangle of weeds? It covers the ground of the whole grove, and it grows rankly under every tree. If you'll pardon me for saying so, it gives the place an awfully unkempt look. If--" Her gay laugh broke in on his somewhat hesitant criticism. "Say that to any Floridian," she mocked, "and he'll save you the trouble of looking for work by getting you admitted to the nearest asylum. Why Milo fosters those weeds and fertilizes them and even warns the men not to trample them in walking here. If you should begin your work for Milo by hoeing out any of these weeds he'd have to buy weed-seeds and sow them all over again. He--" "Then there's a market for this sort of stuff?" he asked, stooping to inspect with interest a spray of smelly ragweed. "I didn't know--"