for the rest of the week. I love the
fruit and vegetable garden, too. It's so amusing to see how things
grow! Especially,"--she laughed mischievously, showing a whole nest of
baby dimples in one pink cheek, "I warn you frankly that this is a
hint!--especially things you can _eat_!"

Noreen and Ida chuckled sympathetically.

"Come along! There is still a bed of late strawberries. We'll take
camp-stools from the summer-house, and you shall sit and feast until you
are tired, and we'll sit and watch you, and talk. We seem to have had
strawberries at every meal for weeks past, and are quite tired of the
sight, so you can have undisturbed possession."

"And I," said Darsie with a sigh, "have never in my life had enough! It
will be quite an epoch to go on eating until I _want_ to stop. That's
the worst of a large family, the dainties divide into such tiny shares!"

Ten minutes later the three girls had taken up their position in the
kitchen garden in a spot which to the town-bred girl seemed ideal for
comfort and beauty. The strawberry-bed ran along the base of an old
brick wall on which the branches of peach-trees stretched out in the
formal upward curves of great candelabra. An old apple-tree curved
obligingly over the gravel path to form a protection from the sun, and
it was the prettiest thing in the world to glance up through the
branches with their clusters of tiny green apples, and see the patches
of blue sky ahead. Darsie sat stretching out her hand to pluck one big
strawberry after another, an expression of beatific contentment on her
face.

"Yes--it's scrumptious to live in the country--in summer! If it were
always like this I'd want to stay for ever, but it must be dreadfully
dull in winter, when everything is dead and still. I shouldn't like it
a bit."

"No! No!" the Percival girls protested in chorus. "It's beautiful
always, and livelier than ever, for there's the hunting. Hunting is
just _the_ most delightful sport! We hunt once a week always, and often
twice--the most exciting runs. We are sorry, absolutely sorry when
spring comes to stop us."

"Oh, do you hunt!" Darsie was quite quelled by the thought of such
splendour. In town it was rare even to see a girl on horseback; a hunt
was a thing which you read about, but never expected to behold with your
own eyes. The knowledge that her new friends actually participated in
this lordly sport raised them to a pinnacle of importance. She