Professor Sterling was an old young man who had given up his life to entomology; his collection of butterflies was more vital to him than any living issue; the Bartletts regarded him as a mild order of lunatic, whose madness might have taken a more dangerous form than making up long names for every-day common bugs.

“Look at him, just look at him, Looizy, sweating himself a day like this, over a common dusty miller.  It beats all, and with his money.”

“Well, it’s a harmless amusement,” said the kindly Louisa, “there’s a heap more harmful things that a man might chase than butterflies.”

The stillness of the midsummer day was broken by the sound of far-off singing.  It came in full-toned volume across the fields, the high soaring of women’s voices blended with the deeper harmony of men.

“What’s that?” said the Squire testily, looking in the direction of the strawberry beds, from whence the singing came.

“It’s only the berry-pickers, father,” said David, coming through the field gate and going over to the well for a drink.

“I wish they’d work more and sing less,” said the Squire.  “All this singing business is too picturesque for me.”

“They’ve about finished, father.  I came for the money to pay them off.”

It was characteristic of Dave to uphold the rights of the berry-pickers.  They were all friends of his, young men and women who sang in the village choir and who went out among their neighbors’ berry patches in summer, and earned a little extra money in picking the fruit.  The village thought only the more of them for their thrift, and their singing at the close of their work was generally regarded in the light of a favor.  Zeke, Sam, Cynthia and Amelia who formed the quartet, had all fine voices and no social function for miles around Wakefield was complete without their music.

The Squire said no more about the berry-pickers.  Dave handed him a paper on which the time of each berry-picker and the amount of his or her wage was marked opposite.  The Squire took it and adjusted his glasses with a certain grimness—­he was honest to the core, but few things came harder to him than parting with money.

Dave and his mother at the churn exchanged a friendly wink.  The extracting of coin from the head of the house was no easy process.  Mother and son both enjoyed its accomplishment through an outside agency.  It was too hard a process in the home circle to be at all agreeable.

While the Squire was wrestling with his arithmetic, Dave noticed a strange girl pass by the outer gate, pause, go on and then return.  He looked at her with deep interest.  She was so pale and tired-looking it seemed as if she had not strength enough left to walk to the house.  Her long lashes rested wearily on the pale cheeks.  She lifted them with an effort, and Dave found himself staring eagerly in a pair of great, sorrowful brown eyes.