“Yes, you shall, if I have to go with you myself.”
Ef May was satisfied; even Lotty’s half suppressed giggle passed unobserved, and her face shone with happy anticipation as turning her chubby feet homeward she smiled her parting salutation:
“Good-by,—I’ll go home an’ ’repair myself for the party.”
The girls laughed, but Lotty said rather regretfully:
“It was kinder too bad to fool the little thing so. What will you say to her when night comes?”
“Oh, I’ll coax her up, somehow—make her doll a new hat, maybe.”
And thus dismissing poor Ef May and her forthcoming disappointment from their minds the two girls walked gaily on, laughing and chatting in their pleasant school-girl fashion, as they gathered the rich purple berries, heedless of scratched hands and stained finger tips, while they listened to the partridge drumming in the cedars overhead, or the social chatter of that provident little householder the squirrel, who, perched upon some convenient bough out of possible reach of their longing fingers, discoursed in the choicest squirrel language of his way of preserving acorns and beechnuts by a receipt handed down from squirrel forefathers as far back as the days of Noah—a receipt that never had failed and never would.
It was after sunset when, with full baskets and tired steps, they walked up the lane that led to Anne’s home, both starting guiltily as they caught sight of Ef May’s little figure seated in the doorway with her bowl of bread and milk and her blue eyes turned wistfully upon them as they came slowly up the clover-bordered path.
“I was in hopes she’d be asleep,” muttered Anne with an uncomfortable feeling at the heart as she saw the joyfully significant nod with which her little sister greeted her, and hastily bestowing a generous handful of the delicious fruit upon her, she said, with an effort to appear natural and at ease:
“See what a lot of nice, ripe blackberries I brought you!”