"How do, Miss Zora—Mr. Alwyn, I sure is glad to see you, sir. Well, if there ain't Aunt Rachel! looking as young as ever. And Higgins, you scamp—Ah, Mr. Sanders—well, gentlemen and ladies, this sure is gwine to be a good cotton season. I remember—" And he ran on endlessly, now to this one, now to that, now to all, his little eyes all the while dancing insinuatingly here and there. About nine o'clock a buggy drove up and Carter and Simpson came in—Carter, a silent, strong-faced, brown laborer, who listened and looked, and Simpson, a worried nervous man, who sat still with difficulty and commenced many sentences but did not finish them. Alwyn looked at his watch and at Zora, but she gave no sign until they heard a rollicking song outside and Tylor burst into the room. He was nearly seven feet high and broad-shouldered, yellow, with curling hair and laughing brown eyes. He was chewing an enormous quid of tobacco, the juice of which he distributed generously, and had had just liquor enough to make him jolly. His entrance was a breeze and a roar.
Alwyn then undertook to explain the land scheme.
"It is the best land in the county—"
"When it's cl'ared," interrupted Johnson, and Simpson looked alarmed.
"It is partially cleared," continued Alwyn, "and our plan is to sell off small twenty-acre farms—"
"You can't do nothing on twenty acres—" began Johnson, but Tylor laid his huge hand right over his mouth and said briefly:
"Shut up!"
Alwyn started again: "We shall sell a few twenty-acre farms but keep one central plantation of one hundred acres for the school. Here Miss Zora will carry on her work and the school will run a model farm with your help. We want to centre here agencies to make life better. We want all sorts of industries; we want a little hospital with a resident physician and two or three nurses; we want a cooperative store for buying supplies; we want a cotton-gin and saw-mill, and in the future other things. This land here, as I have said, is the richest around. We want to keep this hundred acres for the public good, and not sell it. We are going to deed it to a board of trustees, and those trustees are to be chosen from the ones who buy the small farms."
"Who's going to get what's made on this land?" asked Sanders.
"All of us. It is going first to pay for the land, then to support the Home and the School, and then to furnish capital for industries."