annah often twitted him with it. "You can see now that what I
told you was true," said she; "you put your own eyes out." Silas
would say nothing in reply; he would simply make an animal sound of
defiance like a grunt in his throat, and frown. If Hannah kept on, he
would stump heavily out of the room, and swing the door back with a
bang.

This season Hannah had taunted her husband more than usual with his
ill-judged parsimony in the matter of the cherries. The trees were
quite loaded with the small green fruit, and there promised to be a
very large crop. One day Silas turned on her. "You wait," said he;
"mebbe I know what I'm about, more'n you think I do."

Hannah scowled with sharp interrogation at her husband's shrewdly
leering face. "What be you agoin' to do?" she demanded. But she got
no more out of him.

One morning about two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went
halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter
Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach. He picked up a few
stray sticks on the way, ostentatiously, as if that were his errand.

Rose was spreading out the lengths of linen in a wide sunny space
just outside the shade of the cherry-trees. Her father paused, tilted
his head back, and eyed the trees with a look of innocent reflection.
Rose glanced at him, then she went on with her work.

"Guess there's goin' to be considerable many cherries this year,"
remarked her father, in an affable and confidential tone.

"I guess so," replied Rose, shortly, and she flapped out an end of
the wet linen. The cherries were a sore subject with her.

"I guess there's goin' to be more than common," said Silas, still
gazing up at the green boughs full of green fruit clusters.

Rose made no reply; she was down on her knees in the grass stretching
the linen straight.

"I've been thinkin'," her father continued, slowly, "that--mebbe
you'd like to have a little--party, an' ask some of the young folks,
an' eat some of 'em when they get ripe. You could have four trees to
pick off of."

"I should think we'd had enough of cherry parties," Rose cried out,
bitterly.

"I didn't say nothin' about havin' 'em pay anything," said her
father.

Rose straightened herself and looked at him incredulously. "Do you
mean it, father?" said she.

"'Ain't I jest said you might, if you wanted to?"

"Do you mean to have them come here and not pay, father?"

"There ain't no use tryin' to sell any of 'e