at, rich, bursting green burs bending down the boughs
and dropping to the ground. Around them and among them a belt of maples
stood up like blazing torches sharp against the sky--yellow, scarlet,
russet, maroon, and crimson veined with blood, all netted and laced
together, and floating down upon the wind like shattered jewels. Beyond,
the purple mountains, and the creamy haze, and the silent sky.

It was a sight to make younger and older than these four girls stand
still with deepening eyes. For about a half minute nobody spoke, and I
venture to say the four different kinds of thoughts they had just then
would make a pretty bit of a poem.

Whatever they were, a fearfully unromantic and utterly indescribable
howl from Winnie put an unceremonious end to them.

"O-oh! ugh! ah! Gypsy! Joy! I've got catched onto my buttons. My head's
tippin' over the wrong way. Boo-hoo-hoo! Gypsy!"

The girls turned, and stood transfixed, and screamed till they lost
their breath, and laughed till they cried.

Winnie, not being of a sentimental turn of mind, had regarded unmoved
the flaming glories of the maple-leaves, and being influenced by the
more earthly attractions of the chestnuts, had conceived the idea of
seizing advantage of the girls' unpractical rapture to be the first on
the field, and take entire and lawful possession thereof. Therefore had
he made all manner of haste to crawl through the fence, and there had he
stuck fast between two bars, balanced like a see-saw, his head going up
and his feet going down, his feet going up and his head going down.

Gypsy pulled him out as well as she could between her spasms of
laughter.

"I don't see anythin' to laugh at," said Winnie, severely. "If you don't
stop laughin' I'll go way off into the woods and be a Injun and never
come home any more, and build me a house with a chimney to it, 'n' have
baked beans for supper 'n' lots of chestnots, and a gun and a pistol,
and I won't give _you_ any! Goin' to stop laughin'?"

It did not take long to pick up the nuts that the wind and the frost had
already strewn upon the ground, and everybody enjoyed it but Joy. She
pricked her unaccustomed fingers on the sharp burs, and didn't like the
nuts when she had tasted of them.

"They're not the kind of chestnuts we have in Boston," she said; "ours
are soft like potatoes."

"Oh dear, oh dear, she thought they _grew boiled_!" and there was a
great laugh. Joy colored, and did not relish it very mu