"What, you and I, Leslie?" Jessie sat down with the bread knife in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other, the better to consider this proposition. "Just you and I, Jessie. We cannot afford to hire an agent, supposing that one was to be had for the hiring, which is by no means likely. We've been eating the melons for days; they are just in their prime, and I know that Joe counted on making quite a little sum on his cantaloupe crop, but if we wait now, hoping for his return, the melons will be ruined; they will be a total loss." "You needn't offer any more arguments, Leslie. I'm glad you thought of it; it's a pity that I never think of any such thing myself until the procession has gone by. Now let me see, have I got your morning thoughts in order? First, Charity. Toward Joe. Second, Resignation--all capitals--Toward Joe. Third, Labor. For ourselves. Is that right?" "Yes; if you like to put it that way." "You shall have it any way you please, Leslie dear, and I will help you." "After breakfast, then, we will harness up the team and drive the wagon into the melon patch, then--we will fill it." "Yes, and what then?" It was like taking a plunge into cold water. I am sure that I was not intended for a huckster, but I managed to respond with some show of courage: "Why, then I will drive over to the store and sell what I can, and then I will go about among the neighbors with the rest." "Will you?" Jessie breathed a sigh of relief. "That will be enterprising, anyway. I should dreadfully hate to drive about peddling melons myself, but there's such a difference in people about things of that sort." Jessie is so exasperatingly prosaic, at times, that she makes me feel either like crying, or like shaking her. On this occasion I was fortunately hindered from doing either by Ralph, who suddenly appeared, demanding to be "dwessed." After breakfast we harnessed the horses--we could either of us do that as well, and quicker than Joe--then we drove into the enclosure where the olive-tinted little spheres lay thick on the ground and proceeded to fill the wagon-box. The patch was small, but the melons grew in great profusion, and it did not take long. Within a couple of hours I was traveling along the highway, perched upon the high spring seat of the wagon-box, with Guard beside me. Guard was, according to my idea, very good company, and it was, moreover, desirable that he should learn to ride in a wagon and to conduct himself properly while doing so. It was a very warm morning and as the sweet, cloying odor of my wagon load of produce assailed my nostrils, I could not but think of the famous couplet, "You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but the scent of the roses will hang round it still!" My route through the settlement might be traced, I fancied, by the fragrance that the melons exhaled.