GOING BLACKBERRYING.
Unusual peace and quiet reigned at Kayuna for a time after the
excitement of the runaway. It was an unusually warm summer, and so even
Cricket, the tireless, was somewhat subdued. Hilda Mason went away for a
visit, and her little friend missed her very much, for, as she said
privately to Eunice, “Hilda was so much willinger to do things than she
used to be.”
Eunice and Cricket had long planned a blackberrying party when the
blackberries should be in their prime, and mamma said that now would be
just the time to go. The girls had been expecting their little cousin,
Edna Somers, the sister of Will and Archie, to visit them for a week,
and as she arrived on Monday, they decided that the next Wednesday
should be the important day.
The rest of the party was to consist of Edith Craig, from the Rectory,
Ray Emmons, Phil Howard, and his sister Rose, and Daisy and Harry
Pelham. They planned to get up very early on Wednesday,—oh, by five
o’clock, say,—get an early breakfast of bread and milk from the cook,
have luncheon enough packed for both dinner and supper, and then start
for the blackberry pasture, which was nearly three miles away.
No one of the children but the Howards and Ray Emmons had ever been
there, but they were sure that they could easily find the way again.
They would go through the woods to the West Road, and then they were
almost there. They would arrive on the spot long before the sun grew
hot, and would pick blackberries for awhile. Then, when they chose, they
would find a nice place and take their luncheon. Then they would rest
awhile, and after that, pick more berries till their pails were full,
and then, finally, start for home, and get there just in time for
another supper, after a lovely, long day.
The children were all delighted with the idea. They often had small
picnics, but never any so extensive and grown-up as this.
And then the blackberries! Think of the quarts and bushels they would
bring home! What visions of unlimited jam, and spiced blackberries
without stint, floated before their eyes.
Papa teased the girls a little.
“Perhaps I had better send Thomas and the oxen to meet you at the bars?
If they should happen to come home rather fast, you could have
blackberry _jam_ without any trouble,” he said, laughing. Then he
suggested that they should make arrangements with some farmer to take
their extra berries into Boston to sell.
“We don’t want to be swamped under blackberries, you know,” he added.
Then, of course, the boys had their remarks to make.
“You’ll have to take Mopsie and Charcoal, and drive around from house to
house to sell your berries,” said Will.
“Bet you they won’t bring home half a pint between them all,” said
Archie.
“Better keep off Mr. Trante’s land, anyway. All the best berries grow in
his pasture, and wouldn’t he like to catch you picking them!” said
Donald. “He’s been lying in wait for you children, ever since you
flooded his meadows. Most probably he’d put you all in the lock-up, if
he caught you.”
This was a sore subject with Eunice and Cricket, and they turned the
conversation by asking mamma what cook should put up for their luncheon.
“We want a lot,” said Cricket, decidedly. “’Cause we’ll have to have our
dinner, you know, and then we must have enough left for a nice lunch
before we start for home. And have a _lot_ of supper ready, mamma, dear,
’cause we’ll be ’most starved.”
“That’s on the principle that the more you eat, the hungrier you get,”
said Archie.
“For goodness’ sake, make them stop with their supper, mother,” said
Donald, “else they will get so hungry they can’t stand it.”
The children were deaf to all jokes, and preparations for the important
day went merrily on. An excited group of small people met after supper,
on the Wards’ piazza, on the night before, to “make ’rangements.” One
would have thought that they were planning at least a trip to Europe.
“We girls think we won’t go to sleep at all, to-night,” said Eunice,
with much importance. “We always sit up till nine o’clock, anyway, and
five o’clock will come so soon that it won’t be worth while to get
undressed.”
“Whatever you do,” called Donald from his hammock, “please see that
Cricket is chained in bed till the proper time. She prefers to get up at
midnight and go downstairs on her head, you know, when early rising is
in question, and that wakes the rest of us up.”
“Phil’s going to wake me up,” announced Ray. “I’m going to tie a string
to my big toe, and hang the end of the string out of the window, and
Phil will come along and yank it.”
“Be sure you don’t go without us,” pleaded Daisy. “I’ll have to wake
myself up, and Harry, too, for no one in our house ever gets up so
early.”
“I’ll run over and wake you up, too,” said Phil, obligingly. “I’ll throw
stones up at your window.”
They were all to meet at the bars at the entrance of the woods, for the
cart-path through them was much shorter than the distance around by the
road.
“And we’re not going to have any _children_,” finished Eunice, in the
tone of unutterable scorn that always crushed the twins, who were
eagerly listening to the “’rangements.”
When nine o’clock came, and Eunice and Cricket and Edna had gone
upstairs, they decided, in spite of previous resolutions, that it might
be better just to lie down for awhile, “though it was not at all worth
while to go to sleep.” So they stretched themselves on the beds, all
dressed, to talk over the coming day.
“Edna,” said Cricket, presently, after a suspiciously long silence, “my
clothes are all wriggled up, somehow, and I b’lieve I’ll take my dress
off. It won’t take long to put it on in the morning, and I’ll be more
comfortable.”
“I was just thinking,” agreed Edna, sleepily, “that we’d better take off
our dresses.”
“I think,” said Eunice, when their dresses were off, “I’ll take off my
skirts, too. They get so twisty.”
With their skirts removed they lay down again, and began to talk with
renewed zest. Presently conversation flagged again.
“Cricket,” said Edna, rousing suddenly, “I can’t stand it, and I’m going
to bed, just the same as usual. I don’t think it’s a bit of fun to sit
up all night. Listen! What is that striking? Only ten o’clock!”
The others, by this time, were more than willing to go to bed in
ordinary fashion, and in ten minutes more, all three little girls were
in the Land of Nod.
It proved to be a wonderfully prompt little party, for it was only
half-past five o’clock when they all assembled, with well-filled
luncheon-baskets, and empty pails to bring home their blackberries in.
They were all rather heavy-eyed and quiet at first, to be sure, but they
soon grew wide-awake. It seemed a very new world to the little girls,
who had scarcely ever been up at this hour before, though the boys, from
many a fishing and nutting excursion, were more used to it.
“Doesn’t it look as if everything had been washed?” said Cricket,
skipping along delightedly. “How the leaves rustle, and how the birds
sing! I’m going to get up every day, after this, at five o’clock.”
“Bet you, you won’t,” said Ray, sceptically.
“You’d do it for about two days, and then you’d give it up. Girls never
stick to anything.”
“Oh, Ray Emmons!” came in an indignant chorus. “Girls stick as well as
boys.”
“Seems to me that Edith Craig stuck to the head of her jography class
all last winter, and you boys couldn’t help it,” said Daisy Pelham,
triumphantly.
[Illustration: CRICKET TRYING TO CATCH THE MINNOWS.]
“Oh, jography! I wasn’t talking about jography. Bet you I can hit that
squirrel, plump,” thinking it better to change the subject.
When they came to the little brook, a deep pool below a rough bridge
looked so cool and clean that they loitered to throw stones in it, and
scare the minnows gliding around in its transparent depths. Further
down, among the bulrushes, the frogs croaked and jumped.
“Oh, I say,” cried Harry Pelham, “let’s catch some frogs, and have
frogs’ legs for lunch!”
“Oh, don’t touch the slimy things,” pleaded Daisy. “They squirm and
squeak so. Do let’s go on.”
“Are minnows good to eat?” asked Cricket, who was kneeling on the bank,
and looking down into the water. “I b’lieve I could catch them with my
hand.”
She rolled up her cambric sleeves, and dipped her arm in the water. The
minnows slipped tantalizingly near. A particularly big fellow flashed
by.
“Oh, what a bouncer!” Cricket cried. She plunged forward, and of course
she lost her balance and went head and shoulders into the water, in the
endeavour to save herself. Phil, who stood nearest, pulled her up,
dripping.
“Cricket Ward!” exclaimed Eunice, completely disgusted. “I never saw
anything like you. I believe you’d fall into the water if there wasn’t a
saucerful.”
“I b’lieve I would,” acknowledged Cricket, meekly, rubbing her short,
dripping curls with the boys’ handkerchiefs.
“You’re pretty wet,” said Edith. “I’m afraid you’ve got to go home.”
“Oh, no, I won’t,” said Cricket, much surprised at this suggestion.
“I’ll just go round those bushes and wring my waist out, and I’ll get
dry pretty soon, I reckon. My skirt isn’t very wet.”
“You can put on my sacque, Cricket,” suggested Daisy. “Mamma made me
wear it, and it’s awfully hot. Then you can hang your waist over your
arm to dry, so we can go on.”
So Cricket and Daisy retired from view for a while. When they returned
the rest of the party set up a shout. Daisy was much shorter than
Cricket, so that the sleeves scarcely came below her elbow, and the
bottom of the sacque hung only an inch or so below her waist.
“I don’t care,” said Cricket, comfortably. “It covers me up, and my
waist will be dry soon. Do let’s go on. We won’t get to the blackberry
pasture till noon. It must be pretty nearly eleven o’clock now.”
“Thanks to you, young woman,” answered Harry Pelham, who was older than
the rest. “If you will waste our time falling into brooks—”
“Well,” said Cricket, “I always did fall into the water, and I ’xpect I
always will. I remember sitting down in a pail of hot water once, when I
was just a teenty little bit of a thing. My! how it hurt! I just cried
and cried. At least the water wasn’t so very hot, for the cook was only
scrubbing the floor. I had run away down to the kitchen. But the pail
was deep, and I was so little, that I doubled together just like a
jack-knife, and the cook laughed so that she could hardly pull me out.”
The children laughed, too. Harum-scarum Cricket always had accidents
that never would happen to any one else.
“And you were nearly drowned last summer,” said Edna. “Don’t you
remember up at Lake Clear?”
“I never heard about that. What was it?” asked Edith.
“Oh, nothing,” returned Cricket, who never looked upon her adventures as
interesting. “Edna and I went out paddling in a boat. We couldn’t find
but one oar. Edna could paddle, but I didn’t know how, but it looked so
easy that I thought I could do it. So I stood up and took hold of the
oar, and I took one paddle all right and then I put the oar over the
other side, and somehow, I went right over myself. There wasn’t anybody
in sight, but we _hollered_, at least Edna did, and I did when I came
up; then I went down again and when I came up I struck the boat. It was
pretty hard getting in, and I had to climb up over the end. We had lost
the oar, so Edna pulled up the board in the bottom of the boat and she
paddled us ashore. And that’s all, and I wasn’t drowned,” concluded
Cricket, in the most matter-of-fact way.
“Whew!” whistled Harry. “That was a close call.”
“It was fortunate I hit the boat when I came up,” assented Cricket,
placidly, “for Edna didn’t have any oar, and it was hard pulling up the
board to paddle with. I ’xpect I might have been drowned, if I’d floated
off, and had had to wait for her.”
They had been trudging on through the woods while they were talking, and
now they came to where the cart-path forked.
“Which way do we go?” asked Eunice.
“This way,” said Rose.
“No, this way,” contradicted Phil, positively. “I remember that blasted
oak.”
“Seems to me,” began Rose, doubtfully, “that the blasted oak that I
remember was not at the fork, but close to the edge of the woods. I
don’t think that this is the same tree. I do remember that old beech,
though,” she added, pointing down the right-hand path, “and I think that
that is the way.”
“No, I’m sure about that blasted oak down _this_ path,” said Phil, “and
I think this is the one to take.”
“Bet you it is!” put in Ray, supporting Phil, on principle; “I remember
it, too. Come on, boys.” And the children trooped down the left-hand
path, while Rose, though she still looked doubtful, followed the rest.