’em,” said the boy in a more subdued fashion than he had yet spoken. He dropped his earnings into his pocket uncounted, and went away without a good-by. Peggy carried the fish indoors, and was greeted by mocking laughter.

“You’ve added one tramp to the establishment,” said Priscilla, shaking a warning finger in her friend’s absorbed face; “don’t try to annex another.”

Peggy was too much in earnest to notice the banter. “That poor boy! He thinks he hates everybody, and I guess the trouble is that he wants to be liked. I’m going to ask Mrs. Cole or some other nice, motherly person about him.” Then her eyes fell upon the clock and she uttered an exclamation of dismay.

“Girls, where does the time go to? I meant to suggest that we go berrying this morning, but now we’ve got to wait till after dinner. I hope there are no naps to be taken this afternoon. I’m going berrying if I have to go alone.”

“You can count on me, darling,” Amy cried, flinging her arms about Peggy’s neck. And Dorothy chimed in bravely, “An’ you can count on me, Aunt Peggy. But–but what are you going to bury?”

While Peggy was explaining, Claire laid her hand on Priscilla’s arm, and looked tenderly into her eyes.

“We’re going for a walk, you know. You promised last evening.”

Priscilla looked up in surprise.

“Why, I know I said we’d take a walk. But this will be a walk and a lot of fun beside.”

“But, don’t you see,” Claire leaned toward her and spoke rapidly, “it can’t take the place of strolling through the woods just with you alone? There are so many of us girls that I’m simply hungry to have you to myself. I’ve just been living on the thought of it ever since you promised me last night.”

“Very well,” said Priscilla compressing her lips. She resolved to be very careful what she said to Claire, if any casual remark could be construed into a binding promise. With dismay she realized that it was not yet twenty-four hours since their arrival, and already Claire’s demonstrations of affection were becoming irksome.

If she had cherished the hope that Claire would relent, she was destined to disappointment. An early dinner was eaten, and the dishes washed with an alacrity in agreeable contrast to the dilatory methods of the morning. Then the party divided, Claire and Priscilla going off in the direction of the woods–Priscilla walking with more than her usual erectness–while the others took the route to the pastures where the raspberries grew, Peggy having ascertained their exact location in her talk with Joe that morning.

The array of tin pails with the berrying party suggested the probability that the occupants of Dolittle Cottage would eat nothing but raspberries for a week. Aunt Abigail and Dorothy had insisted on equipping themselves with the largest size of pail, though it was noticeable that when they were once in the pasture, most of the berries they gathered went into their mouths. And in this they were undoubtedly wise, for a raspberry fresh from the bushes, warmed by the sun, and fragrant as a rose, with perhaps a blood-red drop of fairy wine in its delicate cup, is vastly superior to its subdued, civilized self, served in a glass dish and smothered in sugar.

It was not long before Aunt Abigail and Dorothy were taking their ease under a tree and placidly eating a few berries which had found a temporary respite at the bottom of their pails. Ruth picked with painstaking conscientiousness, and Peggy with the enjoyment which converts industry into an art. As for Amy, she wandered about the pasture always sure that the next spot was a more promising field of operations than the nearer. She was some distance from the others when her search was rewarded by the discovery of a clump of bushes unusually full.

“There!” exclaimed Amy triumphantly, as if answering the argument of her almost empty pail. “I knew I’d find them thicker. Peggy–oh, Peg–”

Her summons broke off in a startled squeal. There was a rustle on the other side of the bushes, and Amy took a flying leap which landed her on her knees with her overturned pail beside her. She screamed again, and a girl in a gingham dress and sunbonnet of the same material, ran out from behind the leafy screen.

“Oh, I’m sorry if I frightened you,” she exclaimed. “I hope you’re not hurt.”

Amy scrambled to her feet with a sigh of immense relief.

“No, indeed, and I shouldn’t have been scared only I thought it was a cow.”

The grave young face set in the depths of the sunbonnet broke into a smile that quite transformed it.

“Even if it had been,” the girl suggested, “it wouldn’t have been so very dangerous, you know.”

“Maybe not.” Amy’s tone was dubious. And then as Peggy and Ruth came hurrying to the spot, she turned to give them an explanation of the scream which had summoned them in such haste. All four laughed together, and the girl in the sunbonnet had an odd sense of being well acquainted with the friendly invaders.

“I suppose introductions are in order,” Amy rattled on, “but, you see, I don’t know your name.”

“I’m Lucy Haines.”

“Well, this is Peggy Raymond, our mistress of ceremonies, and this is Ruth Wylie, who thinks everything that Peggy does is exactly right, and I’m the scatterbrain of the lot.”

Lucy Haines looked a little bewildered as she met the girls’ smiles, when Peggy came to the rescue. “A crowd of us are in Mrs. Leighton’s cottage for the summer, and this is our first berrying. Don’t you think I’ve had good luck?” She tilted her pail to show its contents, and Lucy Haines admired as in duty bound.

“Let’s see how you’ve done,” suggested Amy, and Lucy brought from the other side of the raspberry bushes a large-sized milk-pail so heaping full that the topmost berries looked as if they were contemplating escape. The girls exclaimed in chorus.

“You don’t mean that you’ve picked those all yourself,” cried Amy, remembering the scanty harvest she had spilled in her tumble.

“Your family must be very fond of raspberries,” observed Ruth.

“Raspberry jam, I suppose,” said the practical Peggy, but the sunbonnet negatived the suggestion by a slow shake.

“No. It’s not that. I pick berries for pay. I send them into the city on the express train every night as long as the season lasts. I want to go to school,” she ended rather abruptly, “and I’m ready to do anything I can to make a little money.”

“And did you really pick them all to-day?” persisted Amy, eyeing the milk-pail respectfully. “It would take me a year, at the least calculation.”

Lucy Haines smiled gravely at the extravagance. “I’ve been doing it all my life,” she said. “That makes a difference.”

“Then you’ve lived here always?”

“Yes, and my mother before me, and her mother, too. When I was a little girl I used to love to hear grandmother tell how one time she was picking blackberries in this very pasture, and she heard a sound and peered around the bush. And there sat a brown bear, eating berries as fast as he could.”

“I’m glad Dorothy isn’t around to hear that story,” Peggy cried laughing; “she’d be sure it was bears whenever anything rustled.” But Amy’s face was serious.

“That’s worse than cows!” she exclaimed. “The next time I hear a noise on the other side of a bush, I shan’t even dare to scream.”

Lucy Haines shifted her pail from her left hand to her right. “Well, I guess I’ll call my stint done for to-day. Good-by!”