My berries ripened rapidly, and I knew they must be ready for picking by hearing that our neighbors were about beginning. It was a momentous day when we began. My mother and myself undertook it: for that afternoon I stayed away from the factory, as it was impossible for me to be absent from so interesting a scene. I had no idea what quantity we were to expect, though I had ransacked my agricultural library in hopes of discovering some approximate solution of this question. Crops were found to vary as unaccountably as modes of culture. One grower would obtain more fruit from a few rods of ground than another from a whole acre. These prevailing contrarieties were well calculated to make me doubtful of what my luck was to be. Hence, when we had gone over the whole half-acre, and found that we had gathered ninety quarts, I was entirely satisfied, and more so from noticing, on a survey of the bed, that there was no perceptible diminution of the quantity remaining on the vines. The fruit was of very superior size, for perhaps few cultivators could have bestowed more labor in keeping the ground in order; and this labor of our own hands was nearly all that the experiment had cost. As I was anxious to follow the directions given by my market friend, we had a great time that evening in assorting the berries, putting them in three lots,--the very largest in one, then the next best, and the smallest in a third. They were placed in nice new baskets as assorted, so as to be handled as little as possible. These were safely stowed in a wheelbarrow, and before daybreak the next morning Fred wheeled them to market. I was with him, of course. It was my first errand,--the first fruits of my long anxiety,--my first appearance as a strawberry-girl.