"I kinda figured you would. Kinda hard to make a 27-acre horse ranch profitable." I did okay," I said. "You expected to get $600,000 for the 80 acres,...didn't you?"He cackled again. "Guilty as charged. You're not a bad horse trader yourself. You beat me out of $50,000. 'Course considering the cost to hold the land and the lack of real property appreciation in this neck of the woods, not to mention the goldurned scarcity of qualified buyers, I came out of the deal mighty fine, too. We both won,. ‘And I think I like to have you around.’ Matt nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because I’ll be here till you’re really better again. I’ll feed you, okay?’ Charlotte nodded. Her hands were too shaky. Matt fed her small spoonfuls and slowly but surely Charlotte ate a little over half the portion Matt had made. Then she said it was alright, and could she have some crackers later? ‘Sure,’ Matt said. ‘More tea then – you’ll have to make sure you drink enough.’ She slowly drank the tea – she could just. I didn't dare make a sound. But I moved my lips and mouthed, "It's okay. I understand."She was still crying quietly. But she winked back at me and I saw the grateful look on her face when she realized I didn't blame her for this.Susan slid onto the table and carefully lowered herself onto her back with her legs hanging down over the side of the table.As soon as Susan was ready, Mrs. Porter said, "Go ahead, Lindsey. Show Susan what you learned today. It won't hurt you to get more practice. And. I also got to unleash some serious Tk devastation for the first time. I made myself what I thought of as an apple peel Frisbee, made of a string of silicon molecules shaped like a loose coil, held in lock by my Tk ability. I whipped that around and through a couple of small trees, and it shredded them, very quickly and very thoroughly. It had the added benefit of being relatively quiet. When I started flinging rocks and small boulders at some other trees, it was considerably noisier, if not.