d our widow in the market-house
proved true to the promises she had made,--there was no difficulty in
finding a sale for it, and somehow it yielded even better prices than
the year before. She said that others were complaining of a drought, and
that the fruit in consequence was generally inferior in size, so that
those who, like myself, had been lucky enough, or painstaking enough, to
secure a full crop, were doing better than ever. Then our little
strawberry-peddler, Lucy Varick, was doing a thriving business. She
established a list of customers among the great ladies in the city, who
bought large daily supplies from her, paying her the highest prices. Her
young heart seemed overflowing with joyfulness at her unexpected
success. It enabled her to take home many a dollar to her mother. Alas!
she seemed to think--if, indeed, she thought at all upon the
subject--that the strawberry season would be a perpetual harvest.

We throve so satisfactorily that my mother seemed to have given up her
cherished longing for a strawberry-garden. Now that we had a new class
of visitors who were likely to be frequent in their calls, I think she
felt a kind of pride in abandoning the project. There was a sort of
dignity in the production of fruit, but something humiliating in the
idea of keeping an eating-house. She even went so far as to decline all
applications from transient callers who had mistaken our premises for
those of our neighbors, thus leaving the latter in undisturbed
possession of their long trains of customers. They were not slow in
discovering that we had ceased to be rivals in this branch of their
business; and finding themselves mistaken in supposing that my
strawberry-crop would come into ruinous competition with theirs, they
seemed disposed to be a little friendly toward us. Indeed, on one or two
occasions, Mrs. Tetchy herself came to us for a large basketful of
fruit, declaring that their own supply was not equal to the demand. She
was unusually pleasant on those occasions, but at the same time insisted
on having the fruit at less than we were getting for it. My mother could
not contend with such a woman, and so submitted to her exactions. I feel
satisfied, however, that her visits were to be attributed quite as much
to a desire to gratify her curiosity as to any want of strawberries; for
I noticed that she never came on these errands without impudently
walking all over our garden, scrutinizing whatever we were doing, h