The Indians disappeared quite suddenly; and perhaps it was nothing surprising that, the very next morning after they left, grandpa Parlin should find his beautiful melon-patch stripped nearly bare, with nothing left on the vines but a few miserable green little melons.
CHAPTER XII.
A PLEASANT SURPRISE.
"It's too bad," said Horace to his sister, "that I didn't get to make baskets; I'd have grown rich so soon. What would you try to do next?"
"Pick berries," suggested Grace.
And that very afternoon they both went blackberrying with Susy and aunt Madge. They had a delightful time. Horace could not help missing Pincher very much: still, in spite of the regret, it was a happier day than the one he and Peter Grant had spent "in the Pines." He was beginning to find, as all children do, how hard it is to get up "a good time" when you are pricked by a guilty conscience, and how easy it is to be happy when you are doing right.
They did not leave the woods till the sun began to sink, and reached home quite tired, but as merry as larks, with baskets nearly full of berries.
When Horace timidly told aunt Madge that he and Grace wanted to sell all they had gathered, his aunt laughed, and said she would buy the fruit if they wished, but wondered what they wanted to do with the money: she supposed it was for the soldiers.