our fun worth them!

That merry orchard was about three miles from Friarswood. It belonged to
a man who kept a small public-house, and had a little farm, and a large
garden, with several cherry trees, which in May were perfect gardens of
blossoms, white as snow, and in August with small black fruit of the sort
known as merries; and unhappily the fertile produce of these trees became
a great temptation to the owner and to all the villagers around.

As Sunday was the only day when people could be at leisure, he chose
three Sundays when the cherries were ripe for throwing open his orchard
to all who chose to come and buy and eat the fruit, and of course cakes
and drink of various kinds were also sold. It was a solitary spot, out
of the way of the police, or the selling in church-time would have been
stopped; but as there may be cases of real distress, the law does not
shut up all houses for selling food and drink on a Sunday, so others,
where there is no necessity, take advantage of it; and so for miles round
all the idle young people and children would call it a holiday to go away
from their churches to eat cherries at Briar Alley, buying and selling on
a Sunday, noisy and clamorous, and forgetting utterly that it was the
Lord's Day, not their day of idle pleasure.

It was a sad pity that an innocent feast of fruit should be almost out of
reach, unless enjoyed in this manner. To be sure, merries might be
bought any day of the week at Briar Alley, and were hawked up and down
Friarswood so cheaply that any one might get a mouth as purple as the
black spaniel's any day in the season; but that was nothing to the fun of
going with numbers, and numbers never could go except on a Sunday. But
if people wish to serve God truly, why, they must make up their minds to
miss pleasures for His sake, and this was one to begin with; and I am
much mistaken if the happiness of the week would not have turned out
greater in the end with him. Ay, and as to the owner of the trees, who
said he was a poor man, and could not afford to lose the profit, I
believe that if he would have trusted God and kept His commandment, his
profit in the long run would have been greater here, to say nothing of
the peril to his own soul of doing wrong, and leading so many into
temptation.

The Kings had been bred up to think a Sunday going to the merry orchard a
thing never to be done; and in his most idle days Alfred would never have
dreamt of such a thing