“I told you I was coming,” Barney said, slowly, and his voice sounded odd to himself.

“I know you did, but I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

Rose still held her basket.  Barney reached out for it.  “Let me get some cherries for you,” he said.

“Oh, I guess you hadn’t better,” Rose returned, holding the basket firmly.

“Why not?”

“I’m—­afraid Charlotte won’t like it,” Rose said.  Her face, upturned to Barney, was full of pitiful seriousness, like a child’s.

“Give me the basket,” demanded Barney, and she yielded.  She stood watching him as he climbed the nearest tree; then she turned and met Charlotte’s stern eyes full upon her.  Rose went under the tree herself, pulled down a low branch, and began to eat; several other girls were doing the same.  Thomas Payne passed the tree, bearing carefully Charlotte’s little basket heaped with the finest cherries.  Rose tossed her head defiantly.  “She needn’t say anything,” she thought.

The morning advanced, the sun stood high, and there was a light wind, which now and then caused the cherry-leaves to smite the faces of the pickers.  There were no robins in the trees that morning; there were only swift whirs of little wings in the distance, and sweet flurried calls which were scarcely noted in the merry clamor of the young men and girls.

Silas Berry stood a little aloof, leaning on a stout cane, looking on with an inscrutable expression on his dry old face.  He noted everything; he saw Rose talking to Barney; he saw his son William eating cherries with Rebecca Thayer out of one basket; but his expression never changed.  The predominant trait in his whole character had seemed to mould his face to itself unchangeably, as the face of a hunting-dog is moulded to his speed and watchfulness.

“Don’t Mr. Berry look just like an old miser?” a girl whispered to Rebecca Thayer; then she started and blushed confusedly, for she remembered suddenly that William Berry was said to be waiting upon Rebecca, and she also remembered that Charlotte Barnard, who was within hearing distance, was his niece.

Rebecca blushed, too.  “I never thought of it,” she said, in a constrained voice.

“Well, I don’t know as he does,” apologized the girl.  “I suppose I thought of it because he’s thin.  I always had an idea that a miser was thin.”  Then she slipped away, and presently whispered to another girl what a mistaken speech she had made, and they put their heads together with soft, averted giggles.

The girls had brought packages of luncheon in their baskets, which they had removed to make space for the cherries, and left with Mrs. Berry in the tavern.  At noon they sent the young men for them, and prepared to have dinner at a little distance from the trees where they had been picking, where the ground was clean.  William and Rose also went up to the tavern, and Rose beckoned to Barney as she passed him.  “Don’t you want to come?” she whispered, as he followed hesitatingly; “there’s something to carry.”