y, he hasn't seen hardly anything, yet," Wealthy
added.

"O well, he will have time to see it all, for he is going to live here,
you know," said Theodora. "But now we really ought to go home, for we
must help Gram get up the dinner, and it is past noon already, I think."

We took our way leisurely up through the fields where the wild
strawberries were in bloom, great patches of them, half an acre in
extent, white with the lowly blossoms. The girls carefully marked
certain places, so as to know where to come early in July, when the
grass was grown tall.

"Gramp does not quite like to have us come into the tall grass, after
strawberries," Theodora remarked, "because we trample the grass down and
make it difficult to mow; but Gram always sends us out and sometimes
goes herself."

"And when she goes, I tell you the grass has to catch it!" exclaimed
Wealthy. "She just creeps along and crushes down a whole acre of it at
one time!"

"Yes, Gramp scolded a little about it one day," said Ellen. "He came in
at noon and said to grandma, 'Ruth Ann, I should think that the
Millerites had been creeping through my east field.' He said that to
tease her, because Gram doesn't approve of the Millerites at all.

"'Joseph,' said Gram, pretty short for her, 'I'm afraid your memory's
failing you.'

"'What's my memory got to do with it?' said Gramp.

"'Didn't I put it in the bargain when I married you, that I should be
allowed to go strawberrying in the hay fields just when I wanted to?'
Gram said.

"At that, Gramp began to laugh and said, that if his memory was failing,
there certainly was nothing the matter with grandma's memory; and he
never said another word about the grass; so I guess he did make some
such promise when they were married."

The girls went into the house; and feeling pretty warm from our walk, I
lay down beneath one of the large old Balm o' Gileads. Addison came out
of the sitting-room and asked where we had been. "I was going to ask you
to go down to the 'Little Sea,'" he added, "for a swim before dinner.
But if you have been down there and back, you would be too warm to go
into the water; so I'll lend you a book to read."

He brought me from his room _Cudjo's Cave_, saying that the Old Squire
and Gram might not consider it wholly proper reading for Sunday, but
that it was his most interesting book, in the way of a story.

"Do you call grandfather the 'Old Squire'?" I asked.

"Yes, that is what the folks a