er wrote to Theodora and suggested
that she and her girl friends make up some mitchella jars, and sell them
in the city.

That was the way the little industry began. The girls, however, did not
really go into the business until the next fall. Then Theodora, Ellen,
and Catherine prepared over a hundred jarfuls of the green vine and
berries. Those they sent to Portland and Boston during Christmas week
under the name of Mitchella Jars, and Christmas Bouquets. The jars,
which were globular in shape and which ranged from a quart in capacity
up to three and four quarts, cost from fifteen to thirty-five cents
apiece. When filled with mitchella vines, they brought from a dollar and
a quarter to two dollars.

On the day above referred to they set out to gather more vines, and they
told the people at home that they were going to "Dunham's open"--an old
clearing beyond our farther pasture, where once a settler named Dunham
had begun to clear a farm. The place was nearly two miles from the old
Squire's, and as the girls did not expect to get home until four
o'clock, they took their luncheon with them.

They hoped to get enough mitchella at the "open" to fill fifteen jars,
and so took two bushel baskets. Four or five inches of hard-frozen snow
was on the ground; but in the shelter of the young pine and fir thickets
that were now encroaching on the borders of the "open" the "cradle
knolls" were partly bare.

However, they found less mitchella at Dunham's open than they had hoped.
After going completely round the borders of the clearing they had
gathered only half a basketful. Kate then proposed that they should go
on to another opening at Adger's lumber camp, on a brook near the foot
of Stoss Pond. She had been there the winter before with Theodora, and
both of them remembered having seen mitchella growing there.

The old lumber road was not hard to follow, and they reached the camp in
a little less than an hour. They found several plats of mitchella, and
began industriously to gather the vine.

They had such a good time at their work that they almost forgot their
luncheon. When at last they opened the pasteboard box in which it was
packed, they found the sandwiches and the mince pie frozen hard. Kate
suggested that they go down to the lumber camp and kindle a fire.

"There's a stove in it that the loggers left three years ago," she said.
"We'll make a fire and thaw our lunch."

"We have no matches!" Ellen exclaimed, when th