And, sure enough! the big ones were all ready for their journey, and the little ones seemed contented as they bade their sisters good-by, and crept under the coverlet to take one more nap before the sun should be up; for the very young need more sleep than the vigorous youth or maiden needs, we know.
“Aunt Maud can have nothing to do with strawberries; is it not a pity?” said Ben. “She says they make her skin prickle, and irritate her tongue and throat so that they itch dreadfully, and they give her a sort of fever, as the roses do,—that is very queer.”
“Not so very,” said Gill, when one understands that the strawberry belongs to the rose family.
“Does it?” said the children, in surprise, “we did not know that,—the leaves do look something like a rose-leaf.”
“Yes,” said the Scotchman. “Both the strawberry and the raspberry belong to the rose family, and people who are affected with the ‘rose cold’ are seldom able to eat these fruits. It must be a sad deprivation.”
“I should hate to be obliged to go without strawberries,” said Sally. “I think there is nothing so nice in all the world.”
“‘Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did,’”, said Gill, who was fond of quoting whatever he had read, if it happened to please him.
“I know from whom you got that,” said Ben. “I heard mamma read it from Isaac Walton the other day.”
“He did not say it, though,” said Gill. “He took it from Doctor Boteler, but it is true enough whoever said it; for never was there a better fruit than the strawberry.”
Gill held up a stem with a cluster of the scarlet berries, and looked at them with admiration.