Hannah scowled with sharp interrogation at her husband's shrewdly leering face. “What be you agoin' to do?” she demanded. But she got no more out of him.
One morning about two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach. He picked up a few stray sticks on the way, ostentatiously, as if that were his errand.
Rose was spreading out the lengths of linen in a wide sunny space just outside the shade of the cherry-trees. Her father paused, tilted his head back, and eyed the trees with a look of innocent reflection. Rose glanced at him, then she went on with her work.
“Guess there's goin' to be considerable many cherries this year,” remarked her father, in an affable and confidential tone.
“I guess so,” replied Rose, shortly, and she flapped out an end of the wet linen. The cherries were a sore subject with her.
“I guess there's goin' to be more than common,” said Silas, still gazing up at the green boughs full of green fruit clusters.
Rose made no reply; she was down on her knees in the grass stretching the linen straight.
“I've been thinkin',” her father continued, slowly, “that—mebbe you'd like to have a little—party, an' ask some of the young folks, an' eat some of 'em when they get ripe. You could have four trees to pick off of.”
“I should think we'd had enough of cherry parties,” Rose cried out, bitterly.
“I didn't say nothin' about havin' 'em pay anything,” said her father.