When Laura and Ivy were routed, he noticed Alene turning as if for flight. However, instead of running away as he had expected, she stooped, picked up the pail of water left by Mat, and, turning back with a sudden movement, dashed the fluid into the boys' faces.
Choked and blinded by the unexpected assault, they fell back.
The smallest boy, who had been in the rear, was the first to recover from the sudden bath. With uplifted hand he made an angry dash at Alene.
"Don't you dare to strike that girl!" cried a boy who came running down from the road. He evidently belonged to the gang but had only appeared on the scene in time to witness their rout. He was a well-built lad of fifteen, with a bearing that showed him to be above his associates, of whom he proclaimed himself the leader by collaring the angry boy who had made the attack on Alene. Then the berry-pickers came hurrying along with cries of, "A rescue, a rescue!" and the strange boys fled, leaving the girls mistresses of the field.
Alene was surprised to find herself a heroine. The girls declared the day lost but for her, and the boys, who had all witnessed the last of the engagement, were loud in her praises.
"I heard that big boy say you were a brave little thing and I agree with him," declared Hugh, who had experienced a sudden compunction for his hasty judgment in the caterpillar affair.
Whereupon the last vestige of Alene's resentment vanished.
"I think I'm entitled to some of the glory," remarked Mat modestly, joining the group around the re-arranged feast. "Didn't I, with remarkable foresight, provide the pail of water for Alene to drown the enemy in?"