“Not in this case. First, I think we ought to stop grieving over Joe’s desertion.”
Jessie’s bright face clouded instantly:
“It is cruel!” she protested.
“I don’t feel as if we ought to say that, Jessie. Joe has been a good, true, faithful friend to us, and he loved father; we, ourselves, loved father no more than Joe did—”
“Why, Leslie!”
“It is true, Jessie. I feel it, someway, and I am not going to blame Joe any more; not even in my own thoughts. It does no good, and it makes us very unhappy. Let’s try to be cheerful again, Jessie, and make the best of it.”
“We must make the best of it whether we are cheerful or not.”
“Very well, then; one of the first things that we must do, if we are to depend on our own efforts, is to market that cantaloupe crop.”
“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.