l them?
Don't let's degenerate into scarecrows because we are obliged to live
this Robinson Crusoe-like life. It's many years since I read that book,
Chris, but if I recollect right he used not only to mend his own
clothes, but make new ones out of goat-skins. `A stitch in time saves
nine,' boys, so mend your ways--I mean the open ways where the wind and
rain get in. See anything of your father, Ned?"

"Yes, sir; he's working away with Mr Wilton up in the far
orange-grove."

"Far orange-grove," repeated Christopher Lee's father bitterly; "a grove
without oranges. Is the blight--the scale, I mean--any better up
there?"

"No, sir. Father said it was a hundred times worse."

"But that was exaggeration, Ned," cried Chris eagerly. "It's very bad,
but not a hundred times worse than it was last time we were there."

"Say eighty or ninety times worse, then," said Chris's father bitterly.

"No; dad's right, sir," cried Ned Bourne. "The twigs and leaves are
covered with those nasty little tortoise-like things, and he says they
are sucking all the juices out of the trees."

"They might have waited till the fruit was ripe," said Chris, with a
grin, "and then been contented with sucking a few oranges."

Doctor Lee smiled sadly at his son, and was silent for a few moments
before saying--

"That's bad news indeed, boys; it's like the last straw that breaks the
camel's back. I did hope that the orange trees were going to be better
this year; it would have made up for that other disappointment."

"What other disappointment, fa?" cried Chris sharply.

"Over the peaches. I've been through the plantations this morning
before I sat down to write home about our troubles."

"But have the peaches got scale too, father?"

"Yes, my boy, and every other blight and disease possible to them,
without counting the dry shrivelled state they are in from the drought."

"Oh dear!" sighed Chris. "There seems to be nothing here but
disappointments."

"Oh yes, there is, my boy," said the doctor; "it is a land of beauty and
perfect health."

"Yes, it's beautiful enough, fa," said Chris grudgingly, "and it's
wonderful to see Mr Bourne, who used to be so weak that he had to be
carried out to lie in the shade, while now he can do anything. He runs
faster than we can, doesn't he, Ned?"

"Ever so much," said the lad proudly, and with glistening eyes.

"And he carried that tree to the saw-pit," said Chris; "the one we
couldn't lif