"It is doing very well," Chandler admitted with pride. "Yet, ah, perhaps there is one field better, certainly as good, and that is the American's north of here; the person you referred to as a fiddler."
"Daddy," and under the tone of raillery was a trace of wistfulness, "we've lived like Guinea Negroes here for three years, and yet I believe you like it. I don't believe you'd go back right now as professor of Sanskrit at Zion College."
The little professor did not reply, but remarked as he held out the cup for another pint of coffee:
"I notice I sleep quite soundly out here, even when the weather is excessively hot."
The girl smiled and felt fully justified in the change she had forced in his way of living.
"I think," remarked Chandler, reflectively, "at the end of the month I'll let Chang Lee go. I think I can some way manage the rest of the season alone."
"Perhaps," assented Imogene, soberly, as she began to pick up the knives and forks and plates. She had not told him that when Chang Lee's wages for June were paid it would leave them less than twenty dollars to get through the summer on. "I've been learning to irrigate the cotton rows and I can help," she said. "It will be a lot of fun."
The ex-professor was vaguely troubled. He knew in a remote sort of way that their finances were at a low ebb. Imogene always attended to the business.
"Do you suppose, daughter," he asked, troubled, "that it is practical for us to continue in our present environment for another season?"
"Surest thing, you know," she laughed reassuringly. "Run along now to bed; you are tired." He sighed with a delicious sense of relief and sleepiness, and went.