Mrs. Grayson had slowed the car to peer at mailboxes along the road. The name, Carl Wingate, had been painted on one of them.
“Here we are,” the lady announced. “Wingate Farm.”
All along the road the cherry trees were so loaded with scarlet fruit that the boughs hung almost on the ground. The girls had never seen a more beautiful sight.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right now?” Mrs. Grayson asked, opening the car door. “Oh, yes,” Connie assured her. “Thank you for the ride and the quilt.”
Scarcely noticing as Mrs. Grayson drove on, the girls gazed up and down the road. On either side, as far as could be seen, stretched row upon row of cherry trees.
“It looks like a sea of red,” Veve declared in awe. “There must be millions and millions of pounds of cherries here! Don’t you wish we could pick them all?”
“Every single one!” laughed Connie.
Both girls were now in high good humor, thinking of the money they and the other Brownies would make for the troop. Unfastening the gate, they walked between rows of cherry trees, up a winding driveway toward the house.
When the two girls were half-way up to the dwelling, they heard someone speaking in a loud, angry voice. At first they could not guess who might be talking, for they could not see the speaker.
But his voice reached them very clearly.