"Mr. Frost, you mean?"
"Yes. He's got awful queer notions, Philander has. He talks about bare floors being healthy. Good gracious! It gives me a chill to think of this room in November without a carpet on the floor. I've done without lots of things in my life, but I never was too poor to have my floors carpeted."
Amy was sorry she had broached the subject, for now that Aunt Phoebe was started, she seemed to find it difficult to stop talking about her grievance. Like many people who do not ask a great deal of life, she was the more insistent regarding the few things she counted essential. The bare floor, echoing noisily under the tread of her guests, stirred her indignation and almost spoiled her childlike satisfaction in entertaining Amy and her friends.
But worse was coming. It appeared that Aunt Phoebe had a heaped glass dish of berries to be served in the conventional fashion with sugar and cream, but she suggested that first the girls might enjoy helping themselves from the patch. As this was really what they had come for, they acquiesced heartily, and Aunt Phoebe led the way. Her kindly old face lost its pensiveness as she watched the laughing girls picking the berries from the vines, their lips and fingers reddening as the feast proceeded. Then without any warning, a deep voice spoke out of the shrubbery, and only too much to the point. "The commission men," said the voice, "are paying twelve cents a box for them strawberries."
Four berry-pickers straightened themselves and looked at one another aghast. Aunt Phoebe rushed furiously to their defense. "Philander Frost, this is my niece, Amy Lassell, and she's brought out some young friends to eat strawberries, because I asked her to." Her faded blue eyes emitted electric sparks as she defied him.
"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," said Mr. Frost, still with an air of profound melancholy. "I don't grudge a few strawberries any more than the next man, but with them bringing twelve cents a box—"
"Philander!" The little wrinkled wife was fairly beside herself with mortification. Her withered skin, suffused by a burning blush, rivalled the vivid coloring of youth. "Philander, I don't care if the strawberries are a dollar a quart—"
"Oh, well," said Mr. Frost patiently. "I just thought I'd mention it." He turned away while four girls stood motionless in the strawberry patch, as if there had been a Medusa-like quality in his gaze, turning them all to stone.
"Go right on, dearies," commanded Aunt Phoebe, raising her voice defiantly, so that it should reach the ears of her departing lord and master. "Eat all you want to." But though as a matter of principle, the girls attempted to obey, the sweetness had gone from the luscious fruit. They ate half-heartedly, ashamed to meet one another's eyes, calculating, in spite of themselves, how much Mr. Frost was out of pocket because of their visit.
Aunt Phoebe was plainly disappointed when they declared that they had had enough. She tried to encourage them to think better of it, and when they still insisted, led the way to the house. "I don't think much of strawberries without trimmings, myself," she declared over her shoulder. "When you taste them with sugar and cream, I guess you'll find your appetites coming back."