“Wretch that he was,” said Martin. “But if we begin talking about those days I won’t get to work. I stopped in to ask you to go berrying with us this afternoon. I get out of the bank early. We can go up to the woods back of the schoolhouse. The youngsters are anxious to go, and Mother won’t let them go alone, since that copperhead was killed near here. I promised to take them, and we’d all like to have you come.”
“I’d love to go. I’ll be all ready. I haven’t gone for blackberries all season.”
“That’s true, we’ve been missing lots of fun.” He looked at her as though he were seeing her after a long absence. Somehow, he had missed something worth while from his life during the time his head had been turned by Isabel, and he had passed Amanda with a smile and a greeting and had no hours of companionship with her. Why, he didn’t remember that her eyes were so bright, that her red hair waved so becomingly, that--
“I’ll bring a kettle,” she said. “I’m going to pick till I fill it, too, just as we did when we were youngsters.”
“All right. We’ll meet you at the schoolhouse.”
The spur of mountains near Crow Hill was a favorite berrying range for the people of that section of Lancaster County. In July and August huckleberries, elders and blackberries grew there in fragrant luxuriance.
When Amanda, in an old dress of cool green, a wide-brimmed hat on her head, came in sight of the schoolhouse, she saw the Landis party approaching it from the other direction. She swung her tin pail in greeting.
“Oh, there’s Amanda!” the children shouted and ran to meet her, tin pails clanging and dust flying.
Martin, too, wore old clothes that would be none the worse for meeting with briars or crushed berries. A wide straw hat perched on his head made Amanda think, “He looks like a grown-up edition of Whittier’s Barefoot Boy.”
“Here we are, all ready,” said the leader, as they started off to the crude rail fence. Martin would have helped Amanda over the fence, but she ran from him, put up one foot, and was over it in a trice.