ot affirmative.

"No, you ain't."

"I can climb trees."

"You've got to go right straight home. Mother wants you to wind balls
for the rag carpet."

And then Ezra Ray, with disconsolate gaping face over his shoulder,
retreated with awkward lopes across the field, the cow-bell
accompanying his steps with doleful notes.

There were about forty young people at the party when all were
assembled. They came mostly in couples, although now and then a
little group of girls advanced across the field, and young men came
singly. Barnabas Thayer came alone, and rather late; Rebecca had come
some time before with one of her girl mates who had stopped for her.
Barnabas, slender and handsome in his best suit, advancing with a
stern and almost martial air, tried not to see Charlotte Barnard; but
it was as if her face were the natural focus for his eyes, which they
could not escape. However, Charlotte was not talking to Thomas Payne;
he was not even very near her. He was already in the top of a
cherry-tree picking busily. Barney saw his trim dark head and his
bright blue waistcoat among the branches, and his heart gave a guilty
throb of relief. But soon he noted that Charlotte had not her basket,
and the conviction seized him that Thomas had it and was filling it
with the very choicest cherries from the topmost branches, as was
indeed the case.

Charlotte never looked at Barney, although she knew well when he
came. She stood smiling beside another girl, her smooth fair hair
gleaming in the sun, her neck showing pink through her embroidered
lace kerchief, and her gleaming head and her neck seemed to survey
Barney as consciously as her face. Suddenly the fierceness of the
instinct of possession seized him; he said to himself that it was his
wife's neck; no one else should see it. He felt like tearing off his
own coat and covering her with rude force. It made no difference to
him that nearly every other girl there, his sister among the rest,
wore her neck uncovered by even a kerchief; he felt that Charlotte
should not have done so. The other young men were swarming up the
trees with the girls' baskets, but he stood aloof with his forehead
knitted; it was as if all his reason had deserted him. All at once
there was a rustle at his side, and Rose Berry touched him on the
arm; he started, and looked down into her softly glowing little face.

[Illustration: "Charlotte stood beside another girl"]

"Oh, here you are!" said she, and he