Mrs. Chase gathered her white skirts about her, planted her white-shod feet recklessly in the wake of Sally’s, and arrived in due time at the point where Sally had been picking.  From nearby rows Josephine Burnside, Janet Ferry, and Constance Carew lifted heads to greet her.

“How awfully busy you all are!” cried Dorothy, consuming a fat berry with which Sally presented her.  “Too busy to greet your friends!”

“This isn’t a reception, it’s a working affair,” Janet replied gayly.  “Guests may help themselves to refreshments, but mustn’t expect the hostesses to stop picking.”

“You have no trouble about getting the men at your entertainments, Sally,” observed Dorothy, scanning the field.  “They’re all here, I see—­even Max.  Has he left the bank?”

“Yes, the first of May.  This is our third season, you know—­but the first one of bearing.  Max is as enthusiastic as anybody, now.  When you see him nearer you’ll discover a great change in him.  No more banks for him, if we can make anything like a success with the strawberries.”

“How do you know that you will?  You’re such amateurs at it.”

“We’re not, if study of the subject amounts to anything,” Sally asserted, with a little air of pride.  “Between books and experiment stations, and Alec’s course at an agricultural school last winter, and Jarvis’s visits to practical strawberry-growers, it would be strange if our methods went all astray.  But they’re not going astray.  Look at these berries you’re eating!”

Down the rows Jarvis was pursuing much the same line of argument with Neil Chase.  “It’s not in reason, you know,” the visitor objected, critically selecting choice specimens of fruit along the rows and eating them with evident relish, “it’s not in reason for a lot of fellows like you, fresh from books and banks, to jump into this sort of thing and make it go without a hitch.”

“Well, you have the evidence of your eyes before you,” Jarvis returned with great good humour, from his knees among the vines where he was now picking busily again.  “To be sure it hasn’t gone without a hitch.  Last season we had a long spring drought to fight—­and fought it, too, with irrigation.  This spring the shot-hole fungus attacked us, but we overcame it with spraying.  Of course next year a killing frost may come along and finish the crop for the year—­we can’t fight that.  Such a frost is to be reckoned with on an average of about once in five years.  But on the other years we expect to make up.  Don’t you think we can get our prices for such berries as these?  And will you tell me why brains, even amateur ones, can’t solve such problems as we have to face?  You lawyers tackle hard cases and win them, even while you’re green—­if you possess certain qualities to begin with.  We may be conceited, but we have an idea we possess the qualities necessary to successful strawberry culture.  As a game, it’s certainly a mighty interesting one.”