The Field of Scarlet Treasure

IT is Tilly Clapsaddle who always finds out first.

She, on a certain day in early June, appears at our front gate. She presses against the pickets a dark-skinned, wide-mouthed, slightly cross-eyed face.

We cordially greet her.

‘Hullo, Tilly.’

‘Got any sassafras root, Tilly?’

‘Can’t you come in and help us play Indians?’

For answer, Tilly’s rough hand reaches over the pickets. It holds a small cluster of something scarlet and green and white, something that shakes with little trembling balls. It is a bunch of wild strawberries.

‘Fer yer ma,’ explains Tilly. ‘Ast her, kin yer come wid me up back er my house a-berryin’. The fields is red with ’em.’

Down drops Blue Overalls from the apple tree. Up springs Red Hat from the sand-heap. Sunbonnet leaps sharply as an arrow from the swing.

These three individuals, with no word to Tilly Clapsaddle, make a beeline around the house to the breakfastroom door.

‘Tilly’s here — she wants to know — ’

‘Tilly Clapsaddle says, can we — ’

‘Tilly Clapsaddle—’

But the bunch of scarlet and white and green pendants, handed up to the Highest Authority, is better than kingly seal or papal bulla. It is better even than the mighty name of Tilly Clapsaddle. The Highest Authority accepts it. She holds it a minute to her smiling face, then in exquisite homage tucks it in her belt. She smiles on us, tying the necktie of one, smoothing from his hot forehead the hair of another, settling the sunbonnet of a third. At last she says, —

‘I see no objection.’

We catch up three little baskets. We hasten back to Tilly. We find her leisurely waiting, twisting knobs of amber-colored gum from the trunks of our cherry trees.

‘ She says we can go if you ’ll take care of us, Tilly.’

‘She says — don’t let us get our feet wet.’

‘She says we can stay until dinnertime, or until your mother calls you in.’

‘My mother won’t never call me in,’ swaggers Tilly Clapsaddle. ‘ She leaves me come when I like, she leaves me do all what I like — except who I play with; she won’t leave me play with nobody that ain’t reefined.’

We stand proudly and confidently before our visitor, suggesting, ‘We are refined, Tilly.’

‘I bet yer,’ responds Tilly Clapsaddle. She claws off a last globule of resin-colored gum, adding, ‘My maw says yer are. She says you’m the reefinedest, and the high-toned’st and the greatest - hands-for-queer - talk - youngones she ever see.’

We are reassured, complimented, awaiting Tilly’s pleasure. This flattering person, having stowed in her apron pocket quite a lavish store of gum, now opens the gate, marshals us through it, and locking us together by a perfected system of hand-holding, — in which the weaker and more uncertain of step is placed in the centre, and the valiant and more experienced on the two ends, — off we start down the shady sidewalk.

As we clatter along, Sunbonnet, for some occult reason known only to herself, objects to walking on the outside, near the gutter. Sunbonnet makes outcry of dissatisfaction.

We all stop. Sunbonnet explains. Tilly, reviewing the situation, casts about for a remedy. She tries mental healing, giving forth this adage, —

It is enough. We are, male and female, henceforth eager to walk on the outside and come home brides; but Sunbonnet, with calm superiority, now holds tenaciously to the position near the gutter. Tilly’s ruse succeeds.

Another time the flying wedge of walkers comes to a halt because of the protests of Sunbonnet and Blue Overalls against Red Hat, who, as he proceeds, tries to step on every crack where the pavements join. This irregularity of the unit results in the halting and undecided march of the aggregate. There is mutual criticism. Again Tilly makes investigation. Finally she remarks, —

Once more, peace. Red Hat, not wishing to be weighted down with this crime, desists. We proceed in more orderly fashion.

Soon we get away from village pavements. We go adventuring up a side street, turn into a lane, and skip across a field. We come to a little gladed hollow. Here we scramble down a red clay bank, cross, by a single risky plank, a brown brook, and are beginning to toil up the clay bank on the other side, when Red Hat pauses.

‘Gee!’ breathes Red Hat ecstatically; ‘gee!’ He looks longingly at the water. He casts an appreciative eye at a hollow tree, at patches of eddy foam, the green walls of birch, maple, and alder, the curious netted effect of the sun on gravelly ripples. Red Hat sniffs the air, he pricks up his ears, he plants his feet.

‘Come on!’ orders Tilly Clapsaddle.

‘I won’t,’ says Red Hat decidedly. ‘You can go on without me. I — I’m going to stay here. I like it. I’m going to build a tent out of branches and be Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It’s like pirates here, there’s a hollow tree and everythin’ — Oooh! look at those smarty skippers walking up hill on the water. I’m going to see if I can’t drown ’em. Say, Tilly, I bet there’s all sorts of queer things round here.’

We gaze at Red Hat in dismay. Tilly Clapsaddle is stern; she deals firmly with the deserter.

‘Guy!’ ejaculates Tilly Clapsaddle. We have been instructed to the effect that it is a pity such a nice, bright girl as Tilly should say ‘Guy,’ which is not a word used by ladies. Yet we are thrilled when she says it now. She jerks off a small birch twig, strips it of its leaves, and chews sagely on its bark, remarking, ‘Guy! I wouldn’t stay here — not if I wuz to git a dimond ring and a silk dress for it.’

What? She would n’t ? We stare at her in wide-eyed wonder. Tilly Clapsaddle, daughter of valorous Clapsaddles, who would, no doubt, be extremely fascinating in a silk dress and a diamond ring, — Tilly would n’t stay here? — why not?

We gaze vaguely into the shadows around us. We peer up and down the bosky brook. We start at the sight of old blackened stumps, at the haughty flare of skunk-cabbages, at objects that take on menacing shapes, at mysterious signs and wavings over our heads. We become suddenly afraid of the water voices, of the cynical teasing buzz of brook midges. When, for a moment, the sun goes behind a cloud and the hollow darkens, our hearts beat wildly, and we move closer together.

‘Why wouldn’t you—Tilly?’ we inquire.

‘On ’count snakes,’ explains the succinct Tilly. She points to walls of crumbling rock, to nooks and crannies, suggesting the cool sunless apartments of reptiles, continuing, ‘Copperheads, They’m t hick as frogs, here. My paw, he’s killed more snakes ’an he ever seen dollars, but he ain’t never killed no copperheads. Nobody can’t kill none, that’s why there’s so many. There’s more this side the brook,’ indicating where we stand, ‘than there is yander, acrost the brook, bekuz copperheads ain’t like black snakes, they won’t go acrost water. Black snakes will swim acrost the ’Lantic Ocean, once they set their minds to it.’

Though impressed with this idea of the mental control of black snakes, we revert to the more conservative copperheads. ‘Why can’t your father kill them?’ inquires Red Hat.

‘ Guy! ’ says the explosive Tilly, ‘they got gold dollars on their heads. That gives ’em a charm like. If yer could once git near enough to knock the gold dollars off, yer could git ’em easy enough. They’d be tame as jumpin’ropes. But a good many has tried it. My paw, he’s — now — pegged rocks at. ’em, rocks enough to sink a ship, but he ain’t never dared git near enough one to knock its gold dollar off.’

We are awed; speechless. In view of the failure of Mr. Clapsaddle to decimate the copperheads, we feel that the ravine is for us spoiled. Even for Red Hat. Red Hat feels that snake propinquity would destroy t he perfect peace of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. He, Like us, is ready to move on. We wait only for Tilly Clapsaddle, now flat on her stomach, sucking up between her closed teeth long horse-like drinks of brook water. She rises, snub-nose dripping.

‘I wuz that dry,’ she excuses herself impressively. ‘Did yer see how I done it? I alius shuts my teeth like that, to keep from swallerin’ pond-eggs. I dast drink brook water, bekuz I’m thirteen, but you nee’nter.’

‘Why not, Tilly?’ we demur.

We are immediately seized with a thirst t hat beggars description. We devise original means of getting at the water. We would enjoy drawing it to our eager mouths through hollow stalks, dipping it up in leaf-cups and empty tin cans. We tell our guide this.

‘Well, did I say yer could n’t?’ remarks Tilly Clapsaddle with cold reserve. ‘I don’t say yer hint — I only say yer nee’nter. Yer got as good right as I have, only yer liable to swaller baby snakes. A good many has stvallered their first snakes with drinkin’ brook water. Lizards, too. My mother ’s cousin — she — now — ’

As we toil up the clay hill, and out of the shadowy hollow, we hear all there :s to hear aboiit Tilly Clapsaddle’s mother’s cousin. And it is a poignant tale, reeking with mortification and despair. Every dusty chicken we pass, pausing in its nervous search for the Ultimate Bug, bows its head and gives a low, confirming cluck; every cow, glaring, sighs heavy acknowledgment of its truth.

Oh, Tilly Clapsaddle’s mother’s cousin — what a noble, free, confident character! Unconsciously, in a moment of glad abandon and natural thirst, drinking what was apparently innocuous brook-water, swallowing, all unknowingly, one or two baby snakes —or was it pond-eggs, cousin?—and thereafter suffering incredible torment. Oh, Tilly Clapsaddle’s mother’s cousin, thou art all heroine, martyr, and we drink to thy memory— but not —forgive the painful precaution — not in brook water!

By this time we feel that we are far away from home, really embarked on the sunny ways that lead to the Field of Scarlet Treasure. The mystery of novel things comes to our sense, hints of the foreign, the unexplained. We walk away from the familiar. We walk toward the unfamiliar. We, with our little baskets and our eager chatter, had, before, barely realized this, but now it is revealed to us by our approach to what Tilly calls the ‘woods,’

— a bit of timber, dusking both sides of the country highway.

To us, as we pass down the cool bit of road, where the shadows steal from either side, and sniff the pungent smell of wild growths, the ‘woods’ mean the best times we have ever had or are likely to have. They are the nadir of our dreams. They are the possible that holds our impossible. But, though they are potentially the picnic and frolic of our lives, they are also potentially its shadow and nemesis. Though they hold Golden Hair’s house, so do they also the Three Bears. They shelter the fairies, but they also shelter goblins. They harbor Red Riding Hood, but — alack — they also harbor the Wolf!

Now, in the cool bit of road, passing between the two dark walls of woodland, we gaze into the shifting gleam and dimness, speak in low voices, and are sobered.

Red Hat: It — it looks dark — in there!

Blue Overalls: It looks like old men with beards.

Sunbonnet: It looks like camels, and elephants, and things growling!

Tilly Clapsaddle: It looks like—now

— like the cemet’ry — ’n them rocks is dead people.

Tilly, it appears, is sensitive. Something has got on her nerves. She is gloomy. She has moments of thrilling indecision. Sometimes she starts, snorts, and looks vaguely around. Once she jumps and squawks, ‘What’s that?’ We stare at her open-mouthed. The goose-flesh pops out on our skins.

Tilly has long since completed her ballad of the mother’s cousin. She has been having her lyric moments over water-cresses and artichokes, and the shiny leaves she calls ‘bread and butter.’ Now, the effect of the ‘woods’ upon her, she grows epic. Suddenly she stops short, gives a gasp, chortles,

‘Cheese it!’ seizes our hands, links us anew, and orders hoarsely, ’Run,— run like the doosed! ’

We obey. Perhaps no one ever knows what running is, unless he has run as we do now, from an absolutely unnamed, unformed, unseen fear. The highway dust rises in snarls that seem to trip our flying feet. The daisies, their wide eyes staring in horror, flash by. Grasses, birds, stand helpless, looking on, and Tilly Clapsaddle with armbruising clutch, gasps, ‘He’s a-chasin’ us! He’s a-chasin’ us! Run, — run like the doosed!’

After what seems years of stumbling flight, we reach a turn in the road, the turn that takes us out of the wooded belt. The safe blue sky, the mild maternal fields, cheer us. We all stop, while Tilly, with expressions of doubt and fear, looks over her shoulder. We dare now question her.

‘What was it, Tilly?’ we implore.

‘Guy!’ snorts Tilly Clapsaddle. She plucks a feathery grass, conveys it to her mouth, and chews recklessly. We all do likewise. ‘Guy!’ says theatric Tilly. ‘ Did yer see that ole tramp, settin’ there in the woods, hollerin’ at us?’

No, Tilly. No, resourceful one, we had not seen. Tell us, pray, more of this old tramp.

‘Here he was, down behind a rock, lookin’ at us, like this/ — Miss Clapsaddle, crouching, her sunbonnet on one ear, gives us swift portrayal of the ‘old tramp’s’ fiendish leer. She also illustrates his slightly lame gait as he emerges from the wood, and, as she says, ‘chases’ us.

‘Did n’t yer see him, behind that big rock?’

Red Hat rises to the challenge. He also accepts the vernacular.

‘I seen him,’ says Red Hat.

We others are not to be outdone. ‘We seen him/ we say. In joyful acceptance of Tilly’s suggestion, we insist upon it. ‘We seen him —we seen his white vest, in the bushes.'

‘Huh,’ corrects Tilly Clapsaddle. ‘Huh, tramps don’t wear no white vests.' She goes on to explain how a tramp never dresses like a dude. She hints that it may have been a white chicken we ‘seen,’ a white chicken that the tramp had stolen.

We stand, looking back, conjecturing. Our hearts are pounding. We are nearly suffocated with the sense of danger. And yet, curiously enough, each one of us is perfectly aware of the truth. In spite of the Homeric Tilly’s very evident excitement, we know that she saw no tramp. She knows we know it. We all know — and yet — that strange foreboding look of the ‘woods ’; the ‘dead’ rocks! the unsolved tangle and confusion and hidden motives of vines, the apparent movelessness of things that one distinctly saw move. — Ahem — well — if a tramp had not chased us, something had, and so we congratulate each other, we have done well to run!

By this time we reach the lonely notch, where, in a rock-strewn clearing, stands Tilly’s house, gray, ramshackle. We, of all things interested in the dwelling that shelters our comrade, are agog. Tilly, however, shows no pride, until, as we approach nearer, and hear proceeding from a dilapidated lean-to, a curious syncopation of grunts, she remarks, —

‘Them’s the pigs.’

We are alert with interest. We concentrate on the dilapidated lean-to. We can see, inserted in a broad crack of the pen, four odd-looking things, sliding back and forth. Nearer examinations prove them to be restless pink snouts.

We shout with joy. We run forward delightedly. At the same moment something comes strongly, repellently, to our own sophisticated noses, and we pause.

‘ Ugh, Tilly, — what a horrid smell! ’

‘Pooh!’ says the experienced Tilly, ‘that ain t nothing. You can’t have pigs without that/

Red Hat contradicts. ‘I could,’ he asserts. “I would have nice, clean pigs. Ugh—ugh! that awful smell makes me sick!’

‘ Ah! ’ says Tilly — ‘ that’s you. Them’s pigs. Anything that don’t smell bad makes a pig sick.’

Red Hat is silenced. We ponder. Oh, strange world — where an odor so painful to us should make four pigs so happy!

In the centre of Tilly’s ‘yard’ is a thorn-bush. The thorn-bush is bare of leaves, it boasts no flowers of its own. But it has, instead, a mock efflorescence, a burgeoning of inverted eggshells, stuck here and there, blooming palely upon the arid branches. We three behold it with approval, we are deeply impressed. Heavens! This egg tree is wonderful! We commend the ethereal conception, the divine afflatus of Clapsaddle temperament, that should conceive and portray a tree blossoming eggs. We lean against the broken fence, where the component parts of the Clapsaddle wash are hung, to look through the knot-holes and expatiate. We compliment Tilly upon the egg tree. But our friend, for some reason, scorns this praise. She appears anxious, restive, intent upon getting by her residence without being observed from within.

Suddenly the door of the ramshackle house swings open. A gaunt woman appears. It is Mrs. Clapsaddle. We, who never before have seen Mrs. (dapsaddle without her bonnet and shawl, apply stealthy eyes to our respective knot-holes, interested to study her in this new phase. She is at present wearing a greasy black-and-white wrapper, her hair is in a rough braid, and she has a piece of red flannel around her throat . We find her enchanting.

Mrs. Clapsaddle does not at first see us, who are not tall enough to do more than reach to the knot-holes. But. she has spied the admirable Tilly, who, with the swiftness characteristic of her, immediately ducks. Tilly flings herself down by the base-board of the fence. She concentrates a defiant eye on a knot-hole. ‘Lay low,’ she mutters to us. ‘Lay low!’

‘I seen you, you young goat,’ calls Mrs. Clapsaddle feelingly. * Where you bin, you pig-nut? Come in here and I’ll skin you alive.’

Tilly ignores the maternal invitation. She presses her face in dock and plantain leaves. ‘Lay low — lay low,’ she thrillingly adjures us.

But we three do not ‘lay low.’ How can we, when we are consumed with interest and curiosity at beholding Mrs. Clapsaddle for the first time, as it were, unveiled? She, according to our traditions, is a person of enormous sagacity and cleverness. She, mysterious woman, is of the train of circumstance conjoining the stork, the doctor, the new baby, and a visit to grandmother’s. She, sublime artist, puts up currant-jelly, makes crullers. She evolves from the fruit of gayly wound rag-balls, the brilliant distillation known as rag-carpet. And now we know her, modest female, for the designer, the achiever, the owner, of the succulent egg tree. We have no thought but joyously to greet her.

‘How do you do, Mrs. Clapsaddle!’

‘Good-morning, Mrs. Clapsaddle!’

‘How is the baby calf, Mrs. Clapsaddle?’

The courtesy, the cordial unrest raint of these salutations, seem for the moment to jar upon the lady’s ear. She has in her hand a small switch. At the sound of our voices she drops it. She calls up a twist of countenance intended for benevolence, and advances toward the fence. We clamber up to smile and bow.

‘Lord save us — if it ain’t the little Martins! How’s yer maw, children? So yer going strawberryin’? Takkare yer don’t git a sunstroke. My! Sissy, yer growin’, ain’t yer? Land of Goshen, bub, where’d yer git them eyes? Ain’t yer got no tongue, sonny?’

Oh, Mrs. Clapsaddle! Et tu, Clapsaddle! ‘Diamond, Diamond, you little know’ — etc. What is the matter with grown-ups, anyway? Qui FIT? In that one short speech, this lady, otherwise admirable, breaks every rule known to our etiquette. To call the Highest Authority our ‘maw’ is to us hideous. ‘Sissy’ —vile familiarity of commoners. ‘Bub’ — low patronage not. to be defined. But hold! A truce! Mrs. Clapsaddle, we will bear this! You own the egg bush, you are the mother of Tilly!

This latter fact Our Lady of the Wrapper appears to remember. She peers over the fence at her offspring, lying recumbent on the ground, still obstinately ‘laying low.’ Tilly’s black eyes meet her mother’s in sour undiscipline; she appears, by her silent bracing, to anticipate retribution. But Mrs. Clapsaddle, mindful of our observation, vouchsafes only languid and ‘recfined’ reproof.

‘Well, Tully deer,’ with indulgent tolerance, ‘ain’t yer got no manners? Sugar, — don’t yer want to give ’em all a piece?’

The erstwhile apprehensive ‘goat’ and ‘pig-nut,’ but now enormously relieved ‘sugar,’ scrambles to her feet and over the fence. She gives a wild whoop and runs into the ramshackle house. When, later, she emerges, she bears triumphantly three ‘ pieces.’ She hands us each one, her mother nodding approval.

Ye gods! These things are all on the scale of the egg bush. We are struck speechless with the luxury of the entertainment. At home, we, born of the simple life, are permitted only butter on our bread. Tilly, Princess of the Egg Bush, is accustomed, so we know by what we now devour, to bread and butter, and sugar !

As we take leave of Mrs. Clapsaddle and climb up the stony lane leading to the Field of Scarlet Treasure, we meditate on these things. We meditate so hard that when we reach the hilltop, and prepare to crawl under the lanebars into the field itself, it is without a thrill. It is the entrance to Paradise. We are casually aware that we are at last where we would be, — but we are calm about it. There is a moment’s pause, the call of a crow, the bumble of a bee in a buttercup, the sight of daisies and grasses blowing in the wind. Calm, aqueous flood of sky and air, the sweet friendly presence of gentle trees, nothing else — until — all of a sudden — we see red — !

It is a teasing thing now, trying to catch and hold the spell, the old charm of the Field of Scarlet Treasure. One wonders as one stands at the bars today, what was so free and adventurous about it. One’s heart aches to get the old feel of it as it was, a place foreign, bewitched, pregnant with meaning and opportunity. One cannot help letting one’s eye rove wistfully over it as one murmurs, ‘Is this really all there was? An old field, an old, unused field, with an oak tree and a few maples and some rocks and grasses and flowers?’

Not that it has lost a bit of its beauty. The birds still flash through the oak tree branched like the sevenbranched candlestick. The blue baldacchino of the sky still spreads over the high altars of rock, and the scarlet berries hang like rosaries in the chapels of tall grass. Only — something has gone. Red Hat says so; Red Hat owns a hundred strawberry fields now. Blue Overalls agrees with me; Blue Overalls is quite a personage these days. And these gentlemen explain that it is not because one’s mind has grown so very far away from the old things, nor that the place itself has become so familiar; they hold that it is simply because we now view the whole world as through a glass, darkly. We have no longer Tilly Clapsaddle to interpret things for us.

Tilly Clapsaddle! One of us sits at tables where the salt, above or below, as the case may be, has lost its savor. Tilly Clapsaddle! One of us smokes his cigar with the magnates and presidents of the material world, and says it profiteth him nothing. Tilly Clapsaddle! One of us has voyaged and adventured, and found nothing so strange and free and wild and splendid as you. Wherever you are, Tilly Clapsaddle, whatever you do, take it from us: there never was, there never will be, a comrade like unto you.

Our ardent leader, standing hatless, her unbraided hair blowing in her eyes, now points out ecstatically the far-off corner of the field where the berries grow thickest. She prepares for the charge. She stoops, drags up the garters over her brown knees. She throws her old hat recklessly by, she grabs her basket in firm hold, darting off on the morning wind, crying the challenge: —

’Last one down the hill knows what he is! ’

’Last one down the hill knows what he is.' Keats’s band of revelers, coming over the pale blue hills, were but shadows of it.

‘Last one down the hill knows what he is.’ Comus and his rollicking crew were a mere Sunday-school class in their appreciation of it.

‘Last one down the hill knows what he isd Bacchus and his followers — well, they, perhaps, had dim glimmerings. They knew the feeling.

Galumphing drunkenly over stock and stone, tripping over blackberry vines, dashing over hummock and tufty ant-hill, until — oh, Tilly!—oh, Heaven!— the strawberries! We fall on our knees. We grunt and sigh for joy. We are, as our guide, philosopher, and friend says, surrounded by ‘crowds and crowds of ’em.’

Now Tilly, the regent, allots us our little strawberry fiefs, where we may pick without infringing upon her strawberry marches. Now she advises us to line our baskets with grapevine leaves, to fasten other leaves upon our hatless heads. From time to time she calls warnings: —

‘Look out fer poison ivy!’

‘ Handle that hop-toad and you’ll git warts! ’

‘Don’t look at a crow too long, he’ll pick yer eyes out! ’

‘ Cheese it!—that’s a stingin’ spider!’

‘ Don’t eat none of them blue berries, they’m deadly night-shade!’

One can hear those warnings now. One can hear, following close upon them, the bloodcurdling histories of different members of the House of Clapsaddle, who, failing to heed like warnings, thereby, man and woman, suffered lingering tortures, which invariably ended in death and affecting last words.

‘So then, my pa’s brother, my Uncle Dave — he, now — he gives three grunts and he says to my Aunt Maidy — he says, now —he says — “Where’s the rest of them night-shade berries I had for me supper?” He says, “Don’t leave the young ones eat none,” he says — and then, he — now — gives three more grunts, and then he dies!’

Glad calls float up and down the sunny strawberry slope.

‘How many you got?’

‘I only got my basket half-full. How many’ve you got?’

‘I have n’t many yet. I’ve only been finding teeny-weeny ones, that are n’t any good except to eat right away.’

So we, enjoying the social side of berrying, exchanging our wonderful experiences, digress. Tilly, on the other hand, picks fast and furiously. When at last her basket is full of berries, she withdraws. She wanders to where a young maple t ree, green, and shaped like a canopy, is set like a tent in the broad sunny field. Sitting in its shade, she begins swiftly and technically to hull her berries. We appreciate the charm of thus withdrawing from the heat to this convent of the maple tree. We envy her her air of privacy. We ourselves have not many berries, but such as they are, we feel they should be hulled at once. We join Tilly under the little green tent-tree. With expressions of fatigue we drop down on the grass beside her. She eyes our baskets.

‘Huh!’ says Tilly pityingly. ‘Huh, yer ain’t got many. I tell yer what, say you don’t pick no more? It makes yer sweat so. What say we play house with your’n, and we take mine home to yer maw so she won’t jaw?’

It is only for a moment that we are confused by Tilly’s allusion to the Highest Authority as a person who could or would ‘jaw.’ Next minute we are exulting over the idea of ‘playing house.’ The full basket, with its covering of fresh grapevine leaves is set earefully aside in the shade; we gleefully enter upon the most rapturous of pastimes — playing house.

Playing house! — who has n’t played it? Will the children of the next generation play it? If they have the instinct, will they have the fields? Oh, children of the next generation, if you do have a field or two, will you care to go and find it with its hidden Scarlet Treasure? Will you know the joy of picking out a flat rock, topped like a table, and spreading it over with rich patterns of tulip-tree leaves and bits of fuzzy moss? Will you search the woods for little acorn cups and saucers, and birch-bark plates and dishes? Will you add, for the sake of the general scheme of decoration, your hoarded bits of blue and red glass, your much-prized ‘lucky stones,’ your tinfoil and mica and quartz? Oh, children of the future, God help you! God see to it, that some time in your lives you get the chance to play ‘house,’ in the fields, under the open sky!

At last the berries from our three baskets, rather smashed, few in number, but very red and of tempting perfume, are counted out in equal division on four green leaves. These preparations made, and the feast spread before us in the wilderness, we stand aside to view it. Our table looks to us barbaric in splendor, the entertainment luxurious. Like the Romans of old, we recline around our board on grassy beds of pleasance and ease. We eat. We converse. We sing. And while, afar off, we see spread of cloud and tree, the miraculous marquetry of light and shadow, the melting picture of green field and gray boulder and golden country road, we give ear to the unwearying minstrelsy, the thrilling harp of Tilly Clapsaddle.

The morning, like a bright skein, rolls up on the ball of Time. We, like happy little animals, lie close to the earth, dreaming, kicking up our short legs, and licking our scarlet fingers. It, therefore, is with the most avid surprise, the keenest regret, that we at last hear a voice, a very boomerang of echo, swinging up the pasture.

‘ Tulleeee — Tulleeeee ! ’

We turn inquiring eyes upon our leader.

‘Dinner-time,’ says Tilly curtly.

‘Tulleeeeee!’

‘ Yeeeee-s’m,’ responds Tilly. She answers in apparent willingness, but in undertones she disrespectfully mocks the voice, muttering naughtily, ‘Yer red-headed sinner, come down to yer dinner!’ a snatch whose vulgarity vre vaguely feel but which we cannot help regarding as spicy repartee.

Tilly reluctantly rises. She drags futilely at her stockings. ‘Come on,’ she says shortly.

We admiringly follow her.

It is a quicker, less exuberant party that comes out on the highroad in front of Tilly’s house. We are all tired. We have pains in our stomachs. We do not guess that these pains are merely hunger, we feel that t hey may be some fatal, mortal qualm, such as t hose experienced by defunct Clapsaddles. As we somewhat forlornly clamber over the stone wall and stumble into the dusty road by Tilly’s house, she faces us. Some thought seems hidden in her mind; she fixes us with a look somewhat colder than her former patronizing gaze, and she ruthlessly inquires,—

‘ Is youse scared of goin’ home alone? ’

‘Scared’ of it? Scared of going home alone?’ We pause, considerably taken aback. Oh, Tilly,—oh faithless one, — to foregather with us all morning long, on unwritten terms of fidelity, then thus to desert, to plant the knife in our bosoms!

We halt, undecided. We read each others’ faces. We are scared of going home alone. We admit it. Blue Overalls is so scared that the tears come into his eyes and he kicks doggedly at the dust, saying nothing. Sunbonnet, sitting dejectedly by the wayside, looks at the sun through her empty basket, and is speechlessly scared. Red Hat, however, chokes down the lump in his throat and bravely answers, —

‘Naw, — we ain’t afraid. I ain’t afraid. Gee—I’m going on eight. I go everywhere alone, to New York and the post-office and — and church, and everything. If — if I saw a lion, or a tramp, coming, I’d just — I’d just—’ Red Hat’s voice trails away into uncertainty.

But Tilly, Machiavellian, seizes on the principal statement.

‘All right,’ she says nonchalantly. ‘ I ’ll leave youse go alone, then. Youse hurry, and git home in time for dinner, or yer ma ’ll blame me.’ She then seizes on the only basket of berries. ‘What say,’ says the unfathomable Tilly, ‘what say I keep this ’ere basket of berries, so yer maw won’t be pestered with ’em? They’d be so much trash to her.’

We look desperately at one another, we who are not versed in the ways of the world. We cannot grasp the situation. We had gleefully supposed this basket, brimming with red fruit, to be our trove of the Field of Scarlet Treasure. We are about to burst into lamentation, when Red Hat speaks again,—

‘All right,’ says Red Hat carelessly. ‘They are trash, ain’t they? They’re all melted with the sun. They look nasty as anything. We don’t want ’em. We’ — Red Hat draws himself up — ‘we get candy and cake and lemonade at every meal — we would n’t have room for strawberries!’

We part from Tilly. Need I say, in silent, inarticulate sorrow? Our guide, bearing the full basket, — which we now believe she retained solely as propitiation to her uncertain parent, — disappears in the ramshackle house. We three, defenseless and alone, our empty baskets cumbering us, start fearfully down the road.

We keep up a semblance of cheer, though our throats are dry with apprehension. We keep frightened eyes on the lookout for those two walls of ’woods,’ wherein lives and moves and has its being — nameless dread. We scuttle rapidly along, shoes white with dust, hearts wildly beating.

Oh, who is this we see afar off, coming slowly toward us, waving a handkerchief, with clear voice calling?

‘It’s — it’s a gypsy!' gasps Blue Overalls. ‘It’s an Indian, I see his tomahawk — it’s a — a tiger, I see his tail.’ Blue Overalls stops short in the road, grasping his little stained basket, ready to fly.

‘May — maybe, it’s Pocohontas,’ suggests Red Hat hopefully; ‘she — she was a good Indian, you know.’ He hesitates, shading his eyes with berryred fingers, almost sobbing with distorted fears. —‘She’s calling to us.’

We all stop, petrified.

‘It’s — it’s a lady — she’s got a parasol — she looks as if she was laughing — she called my name! — why — it’s — it’s — ’

There is a prolonged and delighted screech. Three figures break into a run. Three pairs of arms wave, three voices shout acclamation. And when at last the Highest Authority turns back with us for home, she is listening to the Chant of the Field of Scarlet Treasure, of bread and butter and sugar, of the — yes — the incomparable virtues of Tilly Clapsaddle!