BUDDY JIM AND MOLLY COTTON-TAIL
The lovely Blackeyed Susans
Were nodding drowsily,
And the Katy-dids were singing
In the old red cherry tree,
The dusky, ripe blueberries called
An invitation sweet
"Come Buddy Jim, come up and see
How good we are to eat."
BUDDY JIM ran around the house to the back porch where Mary the cook was busy shelling green peas for dinner.
"I wonder what kind of pie I can have for dessert tonight," she said. "The red raspberries are all gone, so Old Bob the gardener says, and I'm tired of pie-plant, aren't you, Buddy?"
"I was just thinking I would go and get some blueberries," said Buddy Jim, "and I'll get some so you can make a pie, if you want me to, Mary."
"Bless the lad," said Mary the cook, "that will be fine. Wait till I make you some sandwiches, and find a pail for the berries."
So with one pocket full of doughnuts and one full of sandwiches and one full of cookies—(you never can tell how hungry a boy is going to get when he is working hard picking berries, so Mary the cook said)—Buddy Jim called to Old Dog Sandy and started for the blueberry bushes.
Old Bob the gardener was very proud of those bushes. He had found them many years before, bravely growing in the open pasture, just little wild bushes that had strayed up there from the low places, and he had treated them well, and had given them what they liked best to eat, and had taken such good care of them they had grown into a wonderful blueberry orchard, and the sweet dusky berries were twice as large as any blueberries had ever been before.