“Ah!  You’re poking fun at me, me now,” said Mrs. Perkins, hardly knowing how to receive the acknowledgment.  “But wouldn’t you like to take something after your ride?”

Those were not the days of temperance societies, and it would have been quite secundum regulas, had the gentlemen accepted the offer as intended by their hostess.  The Judge looked at Armstrong, who declined, and then turning to Mrs. Perkins said,

“The strawberry season is not over, I believe”—­

“Oh!  I can give you strawberries and cream,” interrupted the hospitable Mrs. Perkins.

“And would you be so kind as to give them to us in the veranda?  The sun does not shine in, and it will be pleasanter in the open air.”

“Sartainly.  Eliza Jane!” she cried, elevating her voice and speaking through an open door to one of her little daughters, with a blooming multitude of whom Providence had blessed her,

“Eliza Jane, fetch two cheers into the piazza.  That piazza, Judge, is one of the grandest things that ever was.  The old man and me and the children, take ever so much comfort in it.”

“I am glad you like it.  But we will spare your daughter the trouble of taking out the chairs, and carry them ourselves.”

“Not for the world, Judge, for I think it’s best to make children useful.”

Accordingly Eliza Jane brought the chairs, and the mother retiring with her, soon returned with the little girl, bearing in her hands a tray containing the strawberries and cream.  The Judge kissed the child, and gave her a half dollar to buy a ribbon for her bonnet.

“I do declare Judge!” cried the mother, whose gratified looks contradicted the language, “you’ll spoil Eliza Jane.”

“A child of yours cannot be spoiled, Mrs. Perkins,” said the Judge, “as long as she is under your eye.  With your example before her, she is sure to grow up a good and useful woman.”

“Well, I try to do my duty by her,” said Mrs. Perkins, “and I don’t mean it shall be any fault of mine, if she ain’t.”

It was nearly sunset by the time the gentlemen had finished, when the Judge proposed to visit a piece of wood he was clearing at no great distance from the house.  Armstrong acquiesced, and they started off, Mrs. Perkins saying, she should expect them to stop to tea.

Their route lay through some woods and in the direction of the Wootuppocut, on whose banks the clearing was being made.  As they approached, they could hear, more and more distinctly, the measured strokes of an axe, followed soon by the crash of a falling tree.  Then, as they came still nearer, a rustling could be distinguished among the leaves and the sound of the cutting off of limbs.  And now they heard the bark of a dog, and a man’s voice ordering him to stop his noise.

“Keep still, Tige!” said the voice.  “What’s the use of making such a racket?  I can’t hear myself think.  I say stop your noise! shut up!”