"I should say they are," Cherry agreed, ruefully eyeing her bleeding hands. "I don't believe it is going to be any fun picking raspberries. They are lots worse than blackberries." "S'posing we had been the prince who crawled through the hedge to wake Sleeping Beauty. I bet he got good and scratched up, but he kept right on and fin'ly kissed the princess awake." "There ain't any princess in these bushes," grumbled Cherry, pausing to suck a wounded thumb. "No, but there are _berries_, and they are more important than princesses. We couldn't make jelly out of a princess, but we can out--Mercy, what was that noise?" "It's the bull! Run, run! There it comes down the hill!" shrieked Cherry, standing as if rooted to the spot, and staring with horror at the angry animal tearing across the pasture toward them. "Run yourself, you ninny!" screamed Peace, giving the older girl a push, and then scrambling for the fence with Allee dragging by one arm behind her. There was no time to climb over, and the lower rail was too close to the ground for them to crawl under, but Peace did not linger to discuss the question. Grabbing the frightened baby by the heels, she thrust her between the slats, and gave her a shove that pitched her head first into a stagnant mudhole just outside the fence. Then pausing only long enough to see that Cherry was safely through, she followed, still clutching her now empty pail, and landing beside Allee in the mud. "Whew! What a smell!" she spluttered, righting herself and trying to dig her sister out of the pool. "And all on account of that miserable, cowardly bull! Why don't you take someone your own size to fight?" She shook her fist defiantly at the pawing, bellowing brute by the fence, and not satisfied with that method of expressing her anger, she flung the empty bucket at his head, crying in frenzy, "Take that, you old sinner! It b'longs to the berries you've already got." Her aim was truer than she had anticipated, and the pail fell with a rattling clatter over the beast's ugly-looking horns, frightening him so that for a brief moment he stood perfectly still. Then, with a snort of fear and fury, he set off across the field at a mad gallop, with the bucket still tossing on his head. Peace glared angrily after the retreating enemy, too indignant over her loss to think of their peril until Cherry quavered, "Hadn't we better run while we have a chance? Suppose he should batter the fence down." "No danger," Peace muttered shortly; but she picked herself up from the ground, where she was trying to scrape the ill-smelling mud off her shoes, and marched majestically up the road, trundling the cart behind her. "Where are you going?" cried Cherry, when they reached the first cross street. "Here's where we turn." "Turn, then! I'm going on to old Skinflint's house and tell him to keep that ugly bull out of Hartman's pasture until we get those raspberries picked." "With that nasty mud all over you?"