the fashion in which utility and
sentiment were likely to find themselves mixed upon the farm called
Strawberry Acres.

Along its borders ran a riot of vines, wild bushes, even of weeds, only
such of the latter having been cut as were pests of the sort which
scatter their seeds to the winds. Trim and workmanlike as was the
clearing up of the ground just beyond the lane, on either side the lane
itself was very nearly in a state of nature. It was, therefore, a
picturesque roadway enough, and Sally walking along it bareheaded, clad
still in the pink gingham of the morning, found it so to an unusual
degree. Yet it must be admitted that it would have been an object ugly
indeed which would have seemed devoid of all beauty to Sally Lane, on
this, the sixteenth of June.

She kept on, straight up the winding lane, to the border of the woods.
When she had reached the first trees, a fine group of oak and chestnut,
lifting stately limbs, long uncut, far into the summer air, she turned
and paused to look back. From this point she could see far, and the whole
of her family's possessions lay before her, outspread in all the beauty
of June at its bonniest. Impulsively she stretched out her arms.

"Sally Lane," she said softly to herself, with her eyes scanning it all,
"if there's a happier girl than you in the world to-day, she must be
entirely out of her senses with joy."

After a little she sat down, her back against a tree-trunk, her face
toward the distant view.... Presently a big green oak leaf fluttered down
past her eyes, and fell into her lap. "That's odd," she thought, and
looked up. Nothing could be seen but the great limbs, rugged with years,
of the oak beneath which she sat. She looked off again at the view.
Another leaf came swirling down past her, lighting on the ground. "It's
probably a squirrel," she explained to herself, concerning this
phenomenon of falling leaves in June, and tried again to descry its
source, without success. When, however, a shower of the green missiles
came down together, she got to her feet, and walked around the tree.

"They had to come, thick as leaves in Vallombrosa," remarked a familiar
voice from far above her, "before you would pay attention. I fired for at
least ten minutes before you would so much as look up. Will you come up,
or shall I come down?"

"I'd like to come up," Sally replied, smiling up into Jarvis's brown
face, as she espied him, sitting astride a limb well up in the br