“Well, now,” said Ben Overleigh, sinking down beside him, “and I tell you, Bob, you’ve made a deucèd pretty little garden for her. That deaf old woman with the ear-trumpet has not grown finer violets than those yonder; and as for your roses, you could not find any better in Santa Barbara itself. I can’t say much for the grass-plot at present. It reminds me rather of a man’s bald head. But the creepers are just first rate, especially the ones I planted. And there isn’t a bonnier little ranch than yours in the whole neighbourhood. If my lemons were coming on as well as yours, nothing on earth should prevent me from stepping over to the dear old country for a few weeks.” Robert Strafford looked up and smiled. “The trees certainly are doing splendidly,” he said, with some pride. “I know I’ve given them the best part of my strength and time these last three years. There ought to be some return for that, oughtn’t there, Ben?” Ben made no answer, but puffed at his pipe, and Robert Strafford continued: “You see, Hilda and I had been engaged for some time, and things did not go well with me in the old country,--I couldn’t make my niche for myself like other fellows seem able to do,--and then there came that wretched illness of mine, which crippled all my best abilities for the time. So when at last I set to work again, I felt I must leave no stone unturned to grasp some kind of a success: here was a new life and a new material, and I vowed I would contrive something out of it for Hilda and myself.” He paused a moment, and came closer to Ben Overleigh. “But I don’t know how I ever dared hope that she would come out here,” he said, half-dreamily. “I’ve longed for it and dreaded it, and longed for it and dreaded it. If I were to have a message now to say she had thrown it up, I don’t suppose I should ever want to smile again. But that is not the worst thing that would happen to one. I dread something far more--her disappointment, her scorn; for, when all is done and said, it is a wretched land, barren and bereft, and you know yourself how many of the women suffer here. They nearly all hate it. Something dies down in them. You have only got to look at them to know. They have lost the power of caring. I’ve seen it over and over again, and then I have cursed my lemon-trees. And I tell you, Ben, I feel so played out by work and doubt, and so over-shadowed, that if Hilda hates the whole thing, it will just be the death of me. It will kill me outright.”