I really?" exclaimed Alice delightedly. "What could I do?"

"Could I earn some too?" asked Mary Jane eagerly.

"What do you want money for?" laughed Alice, as though a little girl
wouldn't have use for such a thing as money! "You always want to do
everything, Mary Jane!"

"Of course she does," said Grandmother comfortably, "and you do too.
The thing I'm thinking about is more fun if done by two anyway. But
what do you want your money for, dear?" she asked the little girl.

"I want it to get a present for my dear mother," said Mary Jane, "a
present that she don't know anything about and that Daddah don't know
anything about and that nobody gives me the money for. Can I really
truly earn some money?"

"Surely," replied Grandmother. "See those woods, girls?" She pointed
across the garden and across the cornfield to the woods about a quarter
of a mile away. "In those woods are blackberry bushes, lots of them.
And this is about the beginning of the blackberry season. Now if you
girls really want to earn some money you may take your little baskets
and go berrying. I'll buy all you can pick at ten cents a quart. You
ought to easily get your seventy-five cents that way, Alice, for the
bushes ate usually loaded with berries."

"But the berries are yours to begin with," objected Alice, who liked to
be fair; "we can't sell you something that already belongs to you."

"Of course you can't," replied Grandmother, much pleased with Alice's
honesty. "I shouldn't have said 'buy the berries'; I should have said
'pay you for the picking' at ten cents a quart. If I 'bought' the
berries of any one I would have to pay fifteen or twenty cents a quart.
And if I hired some one to pick them for me as I have some years, I
would have to pay ten cents a quart, just as I offered you. So, you
see, I promised you no more than you will fairly earn."

"How do you pick berries?" asked Alice.

"There's only one way," laughed Grandmother, much amused at the
question. "You touch them and off they come! Just pick them off the
bushes and drop them in your basket and the thing is done."

"Let's go now," said Mary Jane eagerly.

"Not now," answered Grandmother, "because it's too near dinner time.
Wait till you have your dinner and a little rest of half an hour. Then
you can start and pick all afternoon."

By two o'clock the girls had hunted up the berry baskets Grandmother
told them to find in the attic (cunning little baskets with