“Never mind.  I’m growing stronger every minute, and mean to begin to cook, next week.”

“Thank goodness!” murmured Bob.  “I mean,” he explained quickly, “that I’m thankful you’re well enough.”

Sally laughed, pulled off her wide straw hat, and sat down beside Bob.

“Your cheeks are pink as hollyhocks,” he observed, eyeing her with satisfaction.

“I had a lovely time picking those raspberries,” she said.  “There must have been a big patch of them back there once.  Bob, I want to start a kitchen garden.  Max and Alec haven’t waked up yet to the fun it would be to grow things on this old place, but you’re always awake.  Come on!”

Bob stood up.

“I’m ready for anything you say, but I don’t know any more about planting gardens than I do about building bridges.  You don’t plant a garden in July—­I’m sure of that.”

“Isn’t there a thing that can go in late, and produce a late crop?”

“Don’t ask me.  Maybe our friend Ferry would know.  If there’s anything he doesn’t know, I haven’t found it out.  It’s funny a preacher should be such an all-round sort of fellow, isn’t it?”

“A—­what?” Sally nearly dropped her raspberries, she was so astonished.

“A preacher.  He preaches in the old white church with the big pillars, away down town in the middle of everything.  I just found it out yesterday from a fellow in the office.”

“Why, it can’t be!  He’s always busy round that garden—­or chopping wood up in our timber tract.  He asked Max to let him work at that—­for the sake of his muscle, he said.”

“If you’ll just stop and think, you’ll find he isn’t round all the time.  He’s in the city every day—­has to be.  He holds a half-hour noon service in the old church every day in the week for men.  Fred Kentner says they flock in there like sheep—­says he goes in often.  It’s cool in there, and he likes the things Ferry says.  I’m going in with Fred some day soon.  I’d like to find out what a fellow that can chop trees and fight with his fists can find to say in a pulpit.”

“Fight with his fists!”

Bob chuckled.  “I tackled him the other evening, out behind his house, just for fun.  I got all I wanted in about two minutes.  He was laughing all the time, but I couldn’t get near him.  He laid me on my back as helpless as a baby.  Say, if Mary Ann doesn’t get round with the oatmeal pretty soon, I’ll have to go without.  It’s twenty minutes past six now.”

“I’ll see about it,” and Sally hurried away, revolving in her mind this astonishing news.

“He can’t be as young as he looks, then,” she said to herself.  “I shouldn’t say he was a minute over twenty-five, but he must be.”

Her mind turned later that day to a project more immediately promising than the garden.  She wanted to have a house party—­a tent party, to be accurate.  The Burnsides had driven out twice to see them since they had become established, but Jarvis had been having another siege with his eyes, and Josephine had been entertaining visitors.  Sally, in the fast-increasing strength and enthusiasm of returning health, longed for her friends, and began to plan how she could have all three with her for the space of at least two days.