r voice had adoring cadences.

Barney nodded.

"I was afraid you weren't coming," said she, and she panted softly
through her red parted lips.

Rose's crisp pink muslin gown flared scalloping around her like the
pink petals of a hollyhock; her slender white arms showed through the
thin sleeves. Barney could not look away from her wide-open,
unfaltering blue eyes, which suddenly displayed to him strange
depths. Charlotte, during all his courtship, had never looked up in
his face like that. He could not himself have told why; but Charlotte
had never for one moment lost sight of the individual, and the
respect due him, in her lover. Rose, in the heart of New England,
bred after the precepts of orthodoxy, was a pagan, and she worshipped
Love himself. Barney was simply the statue that represented the
divinity; another might have done as well had the sculpture been as
fine.

"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 neve