It was after nine when we reached home, and never had home seemed a dearer or safer place. The chores all done, Ralph asleep in his little crib, and Guard sleeping the sleep of the just on the kitchen doorstep, Jessie and I sat down by the table to eat a belated supper, and count our hard-won gains. The melon crop was all sold, and it had netted us forty dollars. CHAPTER XVI A SLEEPLESS NIGHT It was close upon the beginning of another day before Jessie and I got to bed, but, late as it was, I could not sleep. Our pressing financial problem was so constantly in my thoughts that now, in my weariness, I found myself unable to dismiss it. We had collected some money, but not enough--not enough! I turned and tossed restlessly. Now that the time for proving up was so close at hand an increasing terror of failure grew upon me. It did not seem to me that I should be able to endure it if we were obliged to give up our home. Forty dollars! In the stillness of the night that sum, as I reflected upon it, dwindled into insignificance. I reviewed all of our monetary transactions that I could think of, and, adding up the sum total, half convinced myself that we must have made a mistake in the counting that evening. "I'm quite sure that there's more than forty dollars," I told myself, turning over my hot pillow in search of a cooler side, and giving it a vigorous shake. "I'm quite sure! There's the money for Mr. Horton's mending, that was forty cents; and Miss Jones's wrapper was two dollars; and that setting of eggs that I sold to Jennie Speers--I don't remember whether they were two dollars or only fifty cents. Oh, dear! And there was Cleo's calf; that was--I don't remember how much it was!"