t."

"Yes, he has thoroughly recovered," said the doctor, "and we were none
of us so well before in our lives."

"But that makes it so bad for you, fa," said Chris, with something of
his father's bitterness of tone. "How are you ever going to get a
practice together if people will be so horribly healthy?"

"What!" cried the doctor. "Horribly healthy, indeed! Why, you wicked
young ruffian, do you suppose that I want people to be ill? Thank
goodness that it is such a paradise of beauty and health. Don't I have
people come from a hundred miles round with their accidents--broken
limbs and cuts?"

"Doctor Lee," said the other boy, who had been sitting on a flour-barrel
very silent and thoughtful and with his brow puckered up, while his
voice sounded eager and inquiring.

"What is it, sir? Are you going to defend Chris?"

"No, sir; I wasn't thinking about what he said, but about the way
everything we have planted fails. I can't understand it."

"Can't you, my boy?"

"No, sir. We all came here from England, didn't we, to seek for
health?"

"That's right, Ned."

"Father gave up his living in Derbyshire because if he had stopped any
longer he would have died."

"Yes, Ned, and Mr Wilton gave up his practice as a lawyer because his
doctor said that he was in the last stage of consumption."

"But you didn't, sir."

"I was not his attendant, my boy. I had never seen him or Mr Wilton
till I met them here on this land they have taken up."

"Did you think they'd die, sir?"

"I was afraid so, Ned. I never expected to see them recover as they
have."

"Then I won't say it's a horribly disappointing place," cried Ned,
proudly. "I say it's beautiful and grand."

"So it is, my boy," said the doctor; "but why have you begun talking
like this?"

"Oh, that's nothing to do with what I was going to say, sir," said the
boy excitedly.

"What were you going to say, then?" asked the doctor, smiling.

"That I can't understand it, sir."

"Well, you said so before," cried Chris grumpily.

"Of course I did; you needn't catch me up, Chris.--I mean this, sir; I
can't understand why it is that the trees and flowers and other things
grow so beautifully here, while the peaches and oranges, bananas and
corns are always killed by frost or want of water, when they are not
covered with insects and grubs which make them wither away."

"That's simple enough, my dear boy," said the doctor gravely. "All
those things which f