se-whip when I got home if
it wasn't full."

Christina shuddered. "But you did fill it," she cried indignantly.
"Won't he believe you?"

The boy looked at her as an old man might look at a prattling child.
Gavin was only a couple of years older than Christina and no bigger,
but there were ages of hardship in his experience, which her sheltered
childhood could not know. But Christina's heart was always far in
advance of her head, and it guessed much. That look told her volumes.
Quick as a flash, she righted his pail, caught up her own, and tumbled
its fresh rosy wealth into his, heaping it high.

"Oh, Christine! Oh, you mustn't!" The boy caught her hand to stop
her, but Christina jerked away, and ran from him down the twisting
green pathway. And as she ran she heard Mrs. Skinflint's terrible
voice calling,

"Gav-_in_! Is that pail not full yet, you lazy lump?" and Gavin's
prompt reply, "Yes'm. It's heapin'."

And that was some comfort to the homely young person who, with a pail
only half full, and without prospect of either wealth or beauty, was
wending her way down the green tangle of the berry patch. Somehow the
comfort seemed to outweigh the misfortune. Gavin's escape from dire
punishment gave her a feeling of exultation that even a pink satin
ribbon would fail to produce.

A shout from Sandy away down in the green nook where they had left
their dinner pail under a log, quickened her footsteps. She found him
trampling down the berry-bushes in a vain search for the refreshments,
for Sandy was thirteen and in a chronic state of starvation.

"Where on earth you been?" he enquired, in mingled relief and wrath.
"I thought you must be dead and buried. I'm so hungry my back-bone's
comin' out at the front."

Christina giggled. One could never remember one's troubles in Sandy's
gay presence. She dived into the cool cavern beneath the mossy log and
came out with their dinner. Sandy helped her unpack it feverishly.
Mother had put up a very comforting lunch for a starving boy and girl;
thick sandwiches of bread and pork, scones soaked in Maple Syrup, a
half-dozen cookies, a bottle of milk and two generous wedges of pie.

When Sandy had eaten enough to make speech possible he pointed
triumphantly to his full pail.

"Say! What do you think? I've beat you!" He cried in amazement, "I
did a perfect moose of a day's work. The quarter's mine!"

"Well, I've just as much right to it as you have," declared