"I suppose we have eaten some twenty a day from it for the last three months," said Merry.
"Hardly that," said the Invalid, "but say fifteen hundred. And the tree looks almost as full as ever."
"What if we should have them gathered and sold?" suggested Hope—"just to see what an orange tree is really worth. Spafford says that the fruit will not be so good later. It will shrivel at last; and we never can eat all those oranges in any case."
Shipping the oranges was the pleasantest work we had yet done. There was a certain fascination in handling the firm golden balls, in sorting and arranging, in papering and packing; and there was real delight in despatching the first shipment from the farm—the more, perhaps, as the prospect of other shipments began to dwindle. The peas, in spite of the top-dressing, looked yellow and sickly. The cucumbers would not run, and more blossoms fell off than seemed desirable. The Pessimist left off laughing at the idea of farming, and spent a great deal of time walking about the place, looking into things in general.
"Isn't it almost time for those cabbages to begin to head?" he asked one day on returning from a tour of inspection.
"Dryden says," observed Merry, "that those are not cabbages at all: they are collards."
"What, under the sun, are collards?" asked the Invalid.
"They are a coarse sort of cabbage: the colored people like them, but they never head and they won't sell," said Hope, looking up from a treatise on agricultural chemistry. "If those should be collards!"
She laid aside her book and went out to investigate. "At any rate, they will be good for the pigs," she remarked on returning. "I shall have Behavior boil them in that great pot of hers and give them a mess every day. It will save corn."
"'Never say die!'" cried the Pessimist. "'Polly, put the kettle on,-'tle on,-'tle on! Polly, put—'"