"Will you look at that load coming down the street?" said Mrs. Fenlick. "I never saw anything so funny!"
The whole party burst out laughing, as the vehicle, an old apple-green cart, apparently filled with bobbing calico sunbonnets and straw hats, shackled and rattled up to the side door of the inn.
"I shall call them the Antediluvians," laughed Maude Seaton. "Do you know where they come from?" she said, speaking in at the open office-window to the boy.
"I guess they come to sell berries from a place the folks round here call 'The Lost Nation,'" he replied, grinning.
"'The Lost Nation!' Do you hear that?" said Sam Grayson. "Let's have a nearer view of the natives." They all went to the end of the veranda nearest the cart. Sam Grayson and Jack went out to investigate.
Two boys in faded blue overalls and almost brimless straw hats jumped down before the wagon stopped, and began lifting out six-quart pails of shining blackberries from beneath an old buffalo robe. Jack, with his hands in his pockets, sauntered up to the tail of the cart.
"Buy them all, do--do!" cried Miss Seaton, clapping her hands. "We need them to-morrow for our picnic; and pay a good price," she added, "for the sake of the looks. I wouldn't have missed it for anything?"
"How do you sell them?" said Jack to the tall boy who stood with his back to him, busied with the berries.
The boy turned at the sound of the pleasant voice, and lifted his brimless hat by the crown with an air a Harvard freshman might have envied. Jack, seeing it, was sorry he was bareheaded, for he hated to be outdone in such courtesy.
"Ten cents a quart, sir."