"No!" snapped Mrs. Holt, "and neither have you, if you kill
yourself to get it."
"Do I look killed?" inquired her son.
"No. You look the most like a real man I ever saw you," she
conceded.
"And Kate Bates won't need glasses for forty years yet," he said
as he went back to his work in the ravine.
Kate was in the middle of the creek helping plant a big stone. He
stood a second watching her as she told the boys surrounding her
how best to help her, then he turned away, a dull red burning his
cheek. "I'll have her if I die for it," he muttered, "but I hope
to Heaven she doesn't think I am going to work like this for her
every day of my life."
As the villagers sauntered past and watched the work of the new
teacher, many of them thought of things at home they could do that
would improve their premises greatly, and a few went home and
began work of like nature. That made their neighbours' places
look so unkempt that they were forced to trim, and rake, and mend
in turn, so by the time the school began, the whole village was
busy in a crusade that extended to streets and alleys, while the
new teacher was the most popular person who had ever been there.
Without having heard of such a thing, Kate had started Civic
Improvement.
George Holt leaned against a tree trunk and looked down at her as
he rested.
"Do you suppose there is such a thing as ever making anything out
of this?" he asked.
"A perfectly lovely public park for the village, yes; money,
selling it for anything, no! It's too narrow a strip, cut too
deeply with the water, the banks too steep. Commercially, I can't
see that it is worth ten cents."
"Cheering! It is the only thing on earth that truly and wholly
belongs to me. The road divided the land. Father willed
everything on the south side to Mother, so she would have the
house, and the land on this side was mine. I sold off all I could
to Jasper Linn to add to his farm, but he would only buy to within
about twenty rods of the ravine. The land was too rocky and poor.
So about half a mile of this comprises my earthly possessions."
"Do you keep up the taxes?" she asked.
"No. I've never paid them," he said carelessly.
"Then don't be too sure it is yours," she said. "Someone may have
paid them and taken the land. You had better look it up."
"What for?" he demanded.
"It is beautiful. It is the shadiest, coolest place in town.
Having it here doubles the value of your mother's house across the
street. In some way, some day, it might turn out to be worth
something."