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Read Ebook: The Wanderings of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Northern Story by Cervantes Saavedra Miguel De Stanley Louisa Dorothea Translator
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Ebook has 84 lines and 2333 words, and 2 pages
"Oh yes, there is, my boy," said the doctor; "it is a land of beauty and perfect health."
"Yes, it's beautiful enough, fa," said Chris grudgingly, "and it's wonderful to see Mr Bourne, who used to be so weak that he had to be carried out to lie in the shade, while now he can do anything. He runs faster than we can, doesn't he, Ned?"
"Ever so much," said the lad proudly, and with glistening eyes.
"And he carried that tree to the saw-pit," said Chris; "the one we couldn't lift."
"Yes, he has thoroughly recovered," said the doctor, "and we were none of us so well before in our lives."
"But that makes it so bad for you, fa," said Chris, with something of his father's bitterness of tone. "How are you ever going to get a practice together if people will be so horribly healthy?"
"What!" cried the doctor. "Horribly healthy, indeed! Why, you wicked young ruffian, do you suppose that I want people to be ill? Thank goodness that it is such a paradise of beauty and health. Don't I have people come from a hundred miles round with their accidents--broken limbs and cuts?"
"Doctor Lee," said the other boy, who had been sitting on a flour-barrel very silent and thoughtful and with his brow puckered up, while his voice sounded eager and inquiring.
"What is it, sir? Are you going to defend Chris?"
"No, sir; I wasn't thinking about what he said, but about the way everything we have planted fails. I can't understand it."
"Can't you, my boy?"
"No, sir. We all came here from England, didn't we, to seek for health?"
"That's right, Ned."
"Father gave up his living in Derbyshire because if he had stopped any longer he would have died."
"Yes, Ned, and Mr Wilton gave up his practice as a lawyer because his doctor said that he was in the last stage of consumption."
"But you didn't, sir."
"I was not his attendant, my boy. I had never seen him or Mr Wilton till I met them here on this land they have taken up."
"Did you think they'd die, sir?"
"I was afraid so, Ned. I never expected to see them recover as they have."
"Then I won't say it's a horribly disappointing place," cried Ned, proudly. "I say it's beautiful and grand."
"So it is, my boy," said the doctor; "but why have you begun talking like this?"
"Oh, that's nothing to do with what I was going to say, sir," said the boy excitedly.
"What were you going to say, then?" asked the doctor, smiling.
"That I can't understand it, sir."
"Well, you said so before," cried Chris grumpily.
"Of course I did; you needn't catch me up, Chris.--I mean this, sir; I can't understand why it is that the trees and flowers and other things grow so beautifully here, while the peaches and oranges, bananas and corns are always killed by frost or want of water, when they are not covered with insects and grubs which make them wither away."
"That's simple enough, my dear boy," said the doctor gravely. "All those things which flourish so well are natives of this part of the world, and grow wild. Those which we have planted are foreign to the soil, and grow after the fashion to which they have been trained by cultivation. Nature is a better gardener than man, but fruits of the soil that she produces and which flourish so bravely are not suited to our requirements."
"Oh, I see," said Ned thoughtfully. "But what about the millions of insects? Why don't Nature's plants get blighted the same as ours do?"
"They are," replied the doctor; "only in the enormous space and amongst the millions of trees spread about, we do not notice that a part of them suffer. It is only in the plantations and orchards and gardens set apart by man for growing things quite foreign to the soil, that the damage is so plain. Nature never meant groves of oranges to flourish here, or they would have existed--at least, so it seems to me. As it is, we choose to settle down upon wild land that has been the home of the insects which annoy us ever since the beginning of time, and plant those foreign trees, so we must take our chance of their succeeding. Who's that coming across the plantation?"
"Mr Wilton," said Chris, running to the door.
"And father along with him," cried Ned.
"Tut, tut, tut! To dinner, I suppose," said the doctor dismally. "Potatoes and damper! Oh, boys, I did think you would have had a dish of fish."
OUR YANKEE NEIGHBOUR.
The gentlemen named strode into the roughly-fu
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