"Not at all," said the gentleman, heartily; "you are perfectly welcome to pick just as many as you want. But don't step on any more wild strawberries than you can help."
"We'll be careful," said Will, so he nodded good-morning, and the club marched away. "Indeed we won't step on them," he added, when they were out of hearing, "we want the use of them, and it won't do to destroy them."
So bright and early the next morning the club marched to Mr. Clay's meadow, each member armed with a basket, with a good-sized pail inside. They were to fill the pails with berries, and completely cover them with daisies. They worked hard all the morning. About ten o'clock James Clay said to his father, "I guess I'll go out and help. They must be having great fun."
"No, my boy," said Mr. Clay, with a twinkle in his eye, "I would rather not."
When the town clock struck one, the boys had searched the meadow so thoroughly that there was hardly a berry in it, and their pails were nearly all full! Then they went into the woods back of the meadow to rest and take their fill of the fresh fruit. Now you who have no idea of the capacity of boys' stomachs, especially for berries, would hardly believe me if I should state the exact amount that those boys devoured! So I will not give it. Suffice it to say that there were some which they had to throw away, having no place to put them for safe-keeping, and not daring to share them with anyone, for in that case, as Will said, "the cat would be out of the bag." So it came to pass that the rapid river which flowed through Snyvylville could have told, if it had chosen, how one part of it was dyed as red as blood that afternoon, and how it looked as if some awful deed had been done there, until the strawberries were all washed down stream.
On Saturday evening, divers little girls went about the streets of Snyvyville with pails of wild strawberries, and the mothers or fathers of every one of the members of the Do-Nothing Club, happened to buy some of them for the Sunday dinner. But in each family there was great amazement because the boy or boys thereof would eat no berries, and because each boy had the headache and stomachache all day. "I don't believe it was good for you to be out in the sun so long," said Mrs. Post to Will, as she put a fresh cloth dipped in ice-water, on his head. He made no reply, for he knew that it was not the exposure to the sun that gave him the headache, but—quarts of wild strawberries! Too much of a good thing is worse than none at all.
"James dear," said Mrs. Clay to her husband on Saturday evening, after James, Jr., had gone to bed, "I don't believe it will be wise for Jamie to pick all those berries out in the meadow. Couldn't you get somebody to pick them, at two cents a quart? That would leave him quite a good deal of money. The sun is so hot, I am afraid he would get sunstruck."
"I think that will be all right," said Mr. Clay, looking earnestly at his newspaper; "I don't suppose you would mind at all if the person we hired did get sunstruck?"
His wife laughed, but turned again to her mending, and said no more.
On Monday afternoon Mr. Clay went out to continue the work of banishing the aforesaid offensive grass from the face of the earth, but lay down again as he saw, through a crack in the fence, the Do-Nothing Club wending its way toward the apple-trees where it was to meet to talk over the success of the strawberry plan.