Somehow, her level look made him uncomfortable.

He continued, with a shade less assurance: "I was brought up on a farm, though I haven't been on one since I was eighteen.

I might have been better off if I'd stayed there.

Anyhow, when a man's prospects of starving are growing brighter every day, a farm-job is about the pleasantest sort of work he can find." "Starving!" she repeated, in something like contempt.

"If you had been in this region a little longer--say, long enough to pronounce the name, 'Miami' as it's pronounced down here, instead of calling it 'Me-ah-mee,' as you did--if you'd been here longer, you'd know that nobody need starve in Florida.
Nobody who is willing to work.