The children were also permitted to make expeditions to mountain-sides for huckleberries and blackberries. As a result, we often had these wholesome fruits on the table, while my wife canned the surplus for winter use. A harvest apple tree also began to be one of the most popular resorts, and delicious pies made the dinner-hour more welcome than ever. The greater part of the apples were sold, however, and this was true also of the Lima-beans, sweet corn, and melons. We all voted that the smaller ears and melons tasted just as good as if we had picked out the best of everything, and my account-book showed that our income was still running well ahead of our expenses. Bobsey and Winnie had to receive another touch of discipline and learn another lesson from experience. I had marked with my eye a very large, perfect musk-melon, and had decided that it should be kept for seed. They, too, had marked it; and one morning, when they thought themselves unobserved, they carried it off to the seclusion of the raspberry bushes, proposing a selfish feast by themselves. Merton caught a glimpse of the little marauders, and followed them. They cut the melon in two, and found it green and tasteless as a pumpkin. He made me laugh as he described their dismay and disgust, then their fears and forebodings. The latter were soon realized; for seeing me in the distance, he beckoned. As I approached, the children stole out of the bushes, looking very guilty. Merton explained, and I said: "Very well, you shall have your melon for dinner, and little else. I intend you shall enjoy this melon fully. So sit down under that tree and each of you hold half the melon till I release you. You have already learned that you can feast your eyes only." There they were kept, hour after hour, each holding half of the green melon. The dinner-bell rang, and they knew that we had ripe melons and green corn; while nothing was given them but bread and water. Bobsey howled, and Winnie sobbed, but my wife and I agreed that such tendencies toward dishonesty and selfishness merited a lasting lesson. At supper the two culprits were as hungry as little wolves; and when I explained that the big melon had been kept for seed, and that if it had been left to ripen they should have had their share, they felt that they had cheated themselves completely. "Don't you see, children," I concluded, "that acting on the square is not only right, but that it is always best for us in the end?" Then I asked, "Merton, what have the Bagley children been doing since they stopped picking raspberries for us?" "I'm told they've been gathering blackberries and huckleberries in the mountains, and selling them." "That's promising. Now I want you to pick out a good-sized water-melon and half a dozen musk-melons, and I'll leave them at Bagley's cottage to-morrow night as I go down to the village. In old times they would have stolen our crop; now they shall share in it."