“Wish I could take trouble as easy as that boy,” sighed Mammy.  “It slides right off’n him like watah off a duck’s back.”

“He’s like the rollin’ stone that gethah’s no moss,” remarked Uncle Billy.  “He goes rollickin’ through the days, from sunup ’twel sundown, so fast that disappointment and sorrow get rubbed off befo’ they kin strike root.”

Despite all his troubles, if John Jay had been marking his good times with white stones, there would have been enough to build a wall all around the little cabin by the end of the summer.  There were two days especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction:  one was the Saturday when Mars’ Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the Fourth of July, when all the family went to the Oak Grove barbecue.

[Illustration:  Uncle Billy]

But now blackberry season had begun,—­a season that he hated, because Mammy expected him to help her early and late in the patch.  So many of the shining berries slipped down his throat, so many things called his attention away from the brambly bushes, that sometimes it took hours for him to fill his battered quart cup.

Usually his reward was a juicy pie, but this year Mammy changed her plan.  Berries were in demand at Rosehaven, and she had very little time to spend in going after them.

“I’ll give you five cents a gallon for all you’ll pick,” she said to John Jay.  He looked at her in amazement.  As he had never had any money in his life, this seemed a princely offer.  He was standing outside by the stick chimney when she made the promise.  After one sidelong glance, to see if she were in earnest, he threw his feet wildly into the air and walked off on his hands; then, after two or three somersaults backward, he stood up, panting.

“Where’s the buckets at?” he demanded, “I’m goin’ to pick every bush in this neck o’ woods as clean as you’d pick a chicken.”

Now it was Mammy’s turn to be surprised.  She had expected that her offer would lure him on for an hour or two, maybe for a whole day.  She had not supposed that it would keep him faithfully at work for a week, but it did.  His nimble fingers stripped every roadside vine within a mile of the cabin.  His hands and legs, and even his face, were criss-crossed with many brier scratches.  The sun beat down on him unmercifully, but he stuck to his task so closely that he seemed to see berries even when his eyes were shut.  Every day great pailfuls of the shining black beads were sent over to Rosehaven, and every night he dropped a few more nickels into the stocking foot hidden under his pillow.

“Berries is all mighty nigh cleaned out,” he said one noon, when he was about to start out again after dinner.  “Uncle Billy says there’s lots of ‘em down in the gandah thicket, but I’se mos’ afeered to go there.”

“Nothin’ won’t tech you in daylight, honey,” answered Mammy, encouragingly, “but I would n’t go through there at night for love or money I’d as lief go into a lion’s cage.”