“Raspberry jam, I suppose,” said the practical Peggy, but the sunbonnet negatived the suggestion by a slow shake.
“No. It’s not that. I pick berries for pay. I send them into the city on the express train every night as long as the season lasts. I want to go to school,” she ended rather abruptly, “and I’m ready to do anything I can to make a little money.”
“And did you really pick them all to-day?” persisted Amy, eyeing the milk-pail respectfully. “It would take me a year, at the least calculation.”
Lucy Haines smiled gravely at the extravagance. “I’ve been doing it all my life,” she said. “That makes a difference.”
“Then you’ve lived here always?”
“Yes, and my mother before me, and her mother, too. When I was a little girl I used to love to hear grandmother tell how one time she was picking blackberries in this very pasture, and she heard a sound and peered around the bush. And there sat a brown bear, eating berries as fast as he could.”
“I’m glad Dorothy isn’t around to hear that story,” Peggy cried laughing; “she’d be sure it was bears whenever anything rustled.” But Amy’s face was serious.
“That’s worse than cows!” she exclaimed. “The next time I hear a noise on the other side of a bush, I shan’t even dare to scream.”
Lucy Haines shifted her pail from her left hand to her right. “Well, I guess I’ll call my stint done for to-day. Good-by!”
“Good-by,” the others echoed, and Peggy added, with her friendly smile, “I suppose we’ll see you again some day. I hope so, I’m sure.”