For her these were truly halcyon days, and most fervently did she wish that berries ripened the year round. As it was, being both quick of eyes and nimble of fingers, Mrs. Hagood permitted her to come nearly as often as she chose while they were in season. So many a summer morning was thus spent, for the best picking was to the earliest comer, and where it often happened, an addition to her own content if not to the contents of her basket, she met other children of the village bent on a similar errand. And always whatever of the hard or unpleasant the days might hold, every week brought its Sunday, when the interminable hemming and patch-work and carpet rags, with the other more distasteful of the week-day duties were laid aside for one day. Mrs. Hagood was not herself greatly given to church-going, but she considered it an eminently respectable habit and saw to it that the family credit was duly upheld by Mr. Hagood and Posey. In her own mind Posey held the Sundays when Mrs. Hagood stayed at home as by far the most enjoyable. For then Mr. Hagood could pass her surreptitious stems of caraway seed, with an occasional peppermint drop; moreover, he could drop into a gentle doze, and she could venture to move now and then without fear of a sharp nudge from Mrs. Hagood’s vigorous elbow. There, too, was the Sunday School, where she could sit with a row of other girls, exchange furtive remarks between the teacher’s questions, compare library books, or loiter for little chats on the homeward way. Then in the long summer Sunday afternoons she could lie on the grass under the shading maples and read the same library books; or perhaps, what was still better, while Mrs. Hagood dozed in her favorite rocker, she, Mr. Hagood and Rover, who made the third in this trio of friends, would stroll away together, beyond the village, across the open, sunny, breeze-swept fields, past ripening grain and meadow, along fence-rows where alders spread their umbels of lace-like blossoms, and later the golden rod tossed the plumes of its yellow-crested army. These fence-rows that were in very truth the “squirrels’ highway,” on which the sight every now and then of one skurrying along with bright eyes and bushy tail saucily waving defiance, would set Rover nearly wild with excitement, to the great amusement of his companions.