"I never heard him say he expected to make anything," said she, "but I read in one of them fruit-growin' papers he takes that they make as much as three hundred dollars an acre from 'em back in Ellinoi." Sol got up, slowly; took a backward step into the yard; filled his lungs, opened his mouth, made his eyes round. Under the internal pressure his whiskers stood on end and his face grew red. "Oh, you git _out_!" said he. "I can show it to you in the paper," she offered, making as if to put aside her sewing. Sol laid a finger on his palm and stood with his head bent. After a bit he looked up, his eyes still round. "If he even makes a hundred, that'll be two thousand dollars a year!" It was such a magnificent sum that Sol did not feel like taking the familiarity with it of mentioning it aloud. He whispered it, giving it large, rich sound. "Why, I reckon it would be," said she, offhand and careless, just as if two thousand a year, more or less, mattered very little to Joe. "That's more than I ever made in my whole dad-blame life," said Sol. "Well, whose fault is it, Sol?" asked she. "I don't believe it can be done!" "You'll see," she assured him, comfortably. "And Joe he went and stuck to the old place," reflected Sol. "He might 'a' got some better land for his sperimentin' and projeckin' if he'd 'a' looked around." "He was offered land, all the land a man could want," said she. "Ollie wanted him to take over the Chase home place and farm it when she and Morgan married and left, but Joe he said no; the Newbolts had made their failures here, he said, and here they was goin' to make their success. He had to redeem the past, Joe said, and wipe out the mistakes, and show folks what a Newbolt can do when he gits his foot set right." "He'll do it, too," said Sol, without a reserved grudge or jealousy; "he's doin' it already." "Yes, I always knew Joe would," said she. "When he was nothing but a little shaver he'd read the _Cottage Encyclopedy_ and the _Imitation_ and the Bible, from back to back. I said then he'd be governor of this state, and he will." She spoke confidently, nodding over her work. "Shucks! How do you know he will?" Sol's faith was not strong in this high-flying forecast. It seemed to him that it was crowding things a little too far. "You'll live to see it," said she. Sol sat with his back against a pillar of the porch, one foot on the ground, the other standing on the boards in front of him, his hands locked about his doubled knee. He sat there and looked up at the Widow Newbolt, raising his eyebrows and rolling his eyes, but not lifting his head, which was slightly bent. "Well, what's to be's to be," said he. "When's he goin' to marry?" "When he's through goin' to college." "That'll be two or three years, maybe?" "Maybe." "Hum; Alice Price she'll be gettin' purty well along by that time."