Strawberry Acres Part 39

It was late in the afternoon. The Chases had reluctantly taken their departure, bearing with them gifts of strawberries and roses. In the strawberry-patch suns.h.i.+ne and silence reigned undisturbed, except by the light June breeze which rustled the leaves enough to show beneath them the fruit which by day-after-to-morrow would be ripe enough to pick. The first picking had been a small one, and had gone wholly to neighbours and friends and to consumption upon the home table. In two days more the gathering of the harvest would begin in earnest. It may not have been strictly business-like, this opening of the season by feasting and bestowal, but it had pleased the "Lady of the Garden" so to elect, and there had been no dissenting voice--not even that of her brother Max.

Everybody else, it may be presumed, had retired to rest and dress for the evening, which was always spent, when the weather was fair, upon the porch, when Sally, alone, slipped quietly out of the door at the back of the hall and betook herself over the gra.s.s, through the garden, to the path which led up the slope to the woods. The path wound past the orchard, past the strawberry field, and by the side of the pasture where Cowslip and Whiteface were already turning their faces toward the bars.

Its appearance was an example of the fas.h.i.+on in which utility and sentiment were likely to find themselves mixed upon the farm called Strawberry Acres.

Along its borders ran a riot of vines, wild bushes, even of weeds, only such of the latter having been cut as were pests of the sort which scatter their seeds to the winds. Trim and workmanlike as was the clearing up of the ground just beyond the lane, on either side the lane itself was very nearly in a state of nature. It was, therefore, a picturesque roadway enough, and Sally walking along it bareheaded, clad still in the pink gingham of the morning, found it so to an unusual degree. Yet it must be admitted that it would have been an object ugly indeed which would have seemed devoid of all beauty to Sally Lane, on this, the sixteenth of June.

She kept on, straight up the winding lane, to the border of the woods.

When she had reached the first trees, a fine group of oak and chestnut, lifting stately limbs, long uncut, far into the summer air, she turned and paused to look back. From this point she could see far, and the whole of her family's possessions lay before her, outspread in all the beauty of June at its bonniest. Impulsively she stretched out her arms.

"Sally Lane," she said softly to herself, with her eyes scanning it all, "if there's a happier girl than you in the world to-day, she must be entirely out of her senses with joy."

After a little she sat down, her back against a tree-trunk, her face toward the distant view.... Presently a big green oak leaf fluttered down past her eyes, and fell into her lap. "That's odd," she thought, and looked up. Nothing could be seen but the great limbs, rugged with years, of the oak beneath which she sat. She looked off again at the view.

Another leaf came swirling down past her, lighting on the ground. "It's probably a squirrel," she explained to herself, concerning this phenomenon of falling leaves in June, and tried again to descry its source, without success. When, however, a shower of the green missiles came down together, she got to her feet, and walked around the tree.

"They had to come, thick as leaves in Vallombrosa," remarked a familiar voice from far above her, "before you would pay attention. I fired for at least ten minutes before you would so much as look up. Will you come up, or shall I come down?"

"I'd like to come up," Sally replied, smiling up into Jarvis's brown face, as she espied him, sitting astride a limb well up in the branching foliage. "But I don't think it's practical."

"Why be practical? n.o.body is practical on Strawberry Acres, according to a certain brilliant but skeptical attorney from town. Your greatest aim has been to remain a girl as long as possible. Girls climb trees. _Ergo_--"

He began to descend. "Wait!" cried Sally, as he set foot on the lowest limb, a matter of ten feet above her head, and paused to look down at her. "Stay there, please--Do you really want me to come up?"

"Very much. It's entirely possible. Set your foot on that k.n.o.b, reach up your arm, I'll let myself down far enough to get hold of your hand, and the next thing you know you'll be sitting beside me here."

"Then what will happen?"

"Then--we'll have a little talk I've been waiting for all day. I began to think I couldn't get it till evening fell, when the garden might help me out."

"I think the garden is a very nice place for conversation." Sally put both hands behind her back, looking up at him.

"Better than the limb of an oak tree? I admit it--for some sorts of conversation. Up here I should be forced to hold on with one arm. But there would be compensation in that, for with the other arm I should be forced to hold you on!"

His laughing eyes looked down at her. She shook her head. "If I came up the tree I should prove that I am still a girl. If I am still a girl--"

"Are you still a girl? Is that still your greatest desire?" He leaned forward, and the smile suddenly left his lips. His eyes searched hers.

The face she bravely lifted to him was a girl's for youthful beauty, but into it had come something very sweet and womanly, which at last gave him the leave he had waited so long for. "No--I think I've grown up." she said, quite clearly.

With an exclamation, the sinewy figure in the tree made short work of the ten feet to the ground, swinging itself off from the limb by both hands and dropping lightly down.

"I don't think I could have waited a day longer," said Jarvis Burnside.

Then, with the sheltering trunk of the great oak shutting off all possible vision from the far distant house, he drew Sally Lane into his eager arms.

"Why so late?" Maxwell Lane looked up to ask, as his sister Sally came somewhat hurriedly in to dinner, when the rest of the household were half through.

"Please excuse my pink gingham," apologized Sally, as she dropped into her chair. She glanced from Mrs. Burnside in cool white to Josephine in crisp blue.

"Nothing could be more becoming," Josephine a.s.serted, always ready to defend her friend.

"There's a strawberry stain on her right sleeve," Bob pointed out.

"Where's Jarve?" asked Alec.

"I saw him as I came in. He was on his way," replied Sally, lifting a gla.s.s of water to hide a pair of lips which wanted to laugh.

Jarvis appeared. He also was in the garb be had worn all day. The pair seemed oddly similar in the nonchalance they could not quite successfully carry through.

"Look here!" Alec scanned both faces. "You two have been up to something."

"I've been up a tree," Jarvis replied.

"Have you been up a tree too?" Alec questioned his sister.

"Not at all."

"Did you get him up one?"

Sally attempted to answer, but the merriment upon her lips would not be controlled. She gave way to it. Her eyes, in spite of themselves, met Jarvis's. He was laughing too. His face, red showing beneath the tan, was too radiant with his happiness for him to be able to help Sally with any further effort at concealment.

"Don't you think we may as well own up?" he questioned her.

"Own up!" cried Alec. "Do you people flatter yourselves there's anything for you to own up to, that we don't already know?"

"Good for you!" And Max rose up to shake Jarvis's hand.

"It's nothing new, but it's great!" roared Bob, and patted his sister's shoulder.

"My dear!" said Mrs. Burnside. She rose, and Sally ran to her. Josephine followed eagerly, pausing to embrace her brother on the way.

"I don't see," said Uncle Timothy, "but that I am the one to say the only fitting thing. Therefore I say it--from my heart." He seized Jarvis's hand. Sally turned from Josephine to put her arm about his neck.

"G.o.d bless you, my children," said Uncle Timothy.