"You will be all the happier, Warren, if you close up your interests in the West in a manly, business-like way. I always wish to be as proud of you as I am now. What's more, I don't believe in idle men, no matter how rich they are. I should be worried at once if you had nothing to do but sit around and make fine speeches. You'd soon weary of the sugar-plum business, and so should I. I have read somewhere that the true way to keep a man a lover is to give him plenty of work."
"Will you choose my work for me?"
"No; anything you like, so it is not speculation."
"I think I'll come and be your father's gardener."
"If you do," she replied, with a decisive little nod, "you will have to rake and hoe so many hours a day before you can have any dinner."
"But you, fair Eve, would bring your fancy-work, and sit with me in the shade."
"The idea of a gardener sitting in the shade, with weeds growing on every side."
"But you would, my Eve."
"Possibly, after I had seen that you had earned your bread by the 'perspiration of your brow,' as a very nice maiden lady, a neighbor of ours, always phrases it."
"That shall be my calling as soon as I can get East again. Major, I apply for the situation of gardener as soon as I can sell out my interests in the mines."