University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III
BERRYING.

Saturday is school-children's holiday all over our
world, and on the Saturday following that of the
boys' fishing sport, Mrs. Davis had promised her children
that they should go berrying. It was rather late
for blackberries; but Clapham knew a place among the
hills where blackberries, always late, were now in
abundance and perfection, and Clapham had promised
to come down and pioneer them to the spot. Poor
Clapham had washed himself in the brook, as clean as
water without soap (an article his home did not afford)
could make him, had combed out his hair, which
turned off from the comb (a comb Harry had given
to him) in curls, clustering one over another, had put
on a well-patched roundabout, a present from Harry,

and sown up the rips and tears in his pantaloons as well
as he could, and was going forth whistling, with a
light heart, when his mother called after him, “Mind,
Clap, you don't forget to bring me the snuff. You
know you promised, if I washed your shirt, you would.”

“I'll get it, and no mistake,” said Clap, keeping
on his way.

“And, Clap,” said she, running after him, “here is
my mixtur-bottle — it don't hold nothing, hardly — just
get it filled with Jamaica — my stomach is so cold
to-day. Here is a ninepence.”

Clapham stopped. “You told me,” he said, “when
you asked me to sell berries for the snuff, that you had
not a cent in the world.”

“I had not then, Clap — don't be mad — you know
I never tell lies. I found this, since, in dad's corduroys.”

“Put it back, then, mam. We are bad enough
without stealing from one another;” and he flung the
bottle against a rock, and shivered it to atoms.

“You're an ondecent, ongrateful boy! You've no
feeling for your own mother,” scolded and whimpered

Massy. Clapham did not heed her. He had looked
forward, all the week, to this afternoon; his home was
behind him, and even his wretched mother could not
cast a shadow over the sunshine of his present pleasant
expectations. It was one of the brightest of September
days, — warm, but not too warm, — with a freshness
in the air that painted Clapham's cheek with a glow
as ruddy as that of the leaves which here and there
were already dyed in their rich autumn colors. Clapham,
at this moment, looked so handsome, so joyous,
that it seemed as if some good angel must rescue him
from the probable destiny of his life. That good angel
must be the firm resolve, the manly struggle of the
boy himself!

It seemed to Clapham that he saw Rhigi, the
brook, the sky, the world, with a new eye since Harry
had spoken of the “pleasure of being out in pleasant
places.” It never before looked so beautiful to
him, and down he went along the stream, swinging
from bough to bough, singing and whistling as he
went.

He had left the stream at a fall of some fifteen or

twenty feet, and come again upon it at some distance,
when a curve of the shore brought him directly in face
of it, where some stout old grape-vines, hanging from
the trees, had been woven into a seat. Clapham stopped
to look at it, and, while he was looking, something glittered
among the weeds at his feet. It was a purse of
silk and steel beads, and near it lay a pencil. “Ah, Mr.
Lyman's!” thought Clapham. “I might have guessed
he had been drawing here, when I saw the seat.” He
slid the purse's rings. “Goodness me! five dollars, and
ever so much change!” He replaced the bank note
and silver, as if they had scorched his fingers, thrust
the purse into his bosom, and buttoned his roundabout
tight over it, and walked on faster than before. Many,
many thoughts crowded upon the poor boy. “No,
no! — I will not,” he said aloud. “I'm not fit company
for Harry and Annie with these old duds of
pantaloons, and no shoes; but I should be unfitter if
I bought new with this money. No! I will carry it
to Mr. Lyman, and Harry will know it, and like me
better for it; and then I shall — may be — dare to tell
him all. But that's no great honesty just to give Mr.
Lyman his own, to get Harry's friendship. If I could
do it just because it is honest and right to do it, and
for nothing else, then I should think something of
myself; I should somehow be sure of myself, and that
somehow would be better than even having Harry think
well of me. Hurrah! I'll go it!” he shouted, clapping
his hands. “I'll carry it to Mr. Lyman, and get his
promise not to say a word about it.” Clapham Dunn
was a happy boy that day.

In a little time, he bounded into Mrs. Davis's house,
exclaiming, “All ready?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Harry and Annie, in a breath,
“only mother is afraid to let Lucy go. She thinks
she will be too tired.”

“O, please, Mrs. Davis, let her go. Why, it is not
any thing to get her up there. She is as light as a
feather, Lucy is. I can carry her all the way in my
arms, or on my back.”

“So he can, mother, as easy!” pleaded little Lucy.

“Well, go, child; and take the plaid shawl with
you, Annie, to tie round her, if it comes cool towards
evening. Lucy is not as strong as the rest of you;

but you need not carry her, Clapham; only now and
then, if she gets tired, give her a lift.”

“She shall not get tired, dear mother,” said Harry.
“Clapham and I can make a hand-chair, and carry her.”
The boys clasped hands, Lucy jumped on to the seat,
and put an arm on the shoulder of each boy; Annie
followed with the baskets; and so they all went forth,
chattering and laughing, while the good mother stood
at the door, her eye fondly following them, and her
heart echoing the music of their gleeful voices. After
going along the margin of the brook for a while, they
turned off, and ascended through the woodlands to the
blackberry field, the land of promise. It was a large,
scrambling field, on the declivity of Rhigi, with the
briery blackberry skirting all the woodland, and growing
in scattering clumps about the field. Our young friends
were soon reënforced by children from Salisbury and
young mountaineers from Rhigi. A voice of some
fortunate and generous child would be heard shouting,
“O, what a good place I have found!” and then a
swarm would gather and share the spoil, while others,
more selfish, more wary, and more intent on filling

their baskets than on any social pleasure, would-creep
about in hidden places, and never impart to others
their good fortune. The Davises and Clapham kept
together. Clapham's wood-craft stood him in good
stead. He knew every bush in the field; he could pick
twice as fast as any one else. Annie wondered how
her basket filled so rapidly, till she detected Clapham
dropping in a handful of the largest and ripest
berries; and she exclaimed, “O, it's you that have filled
my basket, Clapham, and not I;” and little Lucy said,
“It's all of you that fill my basket, and they are all so
ripe and good; but Clapham's are the bester of all.”

“And you are the `bester' little girl,” said Clapham;
“and do you stay here with Annie, while Hal and
I go up to a clearing, where there's a royal place.
We'll be back in less than no time.” The girls assented,
and the boys run off. Annie made a little
cushion of the blanket shawl for Lucy, and the girls
sat down to eat a bit of gingerbread their mother
had tucked in one of their baskets.

“How pleasant it is here!” said Annie, lying down
on the ground. “See, Lucy, how the white clouds

sail over our heads; and hark! don't you hear the
fall?”

“O, yes! I wish we lived here always. What
do peoples live in houses for, Annie?”

“Why, would you like to live here at night, Lucy?”

“Yes, Annie, if the sun would only shine at night,
and mother would come here, and you, and Harry, and
Clapham would live with us. I love Clapham; don't
you love Clapham, Annie?” Before Annie replied,
Hancock Coles and James Willett, two boys from
the neighborhood, joined them. “Love Clap Dunn!
that's a good one,” cried young Coles. “He's a pretty
fellow to love, or like, or put up with any way. Harry
Davis disgraces himself to keep company with him.”

“Hancock disgraces hisself to say so, don't he,
Annie?” whispered Lucy. Annie, who had risen to
her feet at the approach of the boys, nodded a very
hearty assent, and Lucy turned to Hancock, and, doubling
her little fist, and shaking it most energetically
at him, she said, “You don't know Clapham!”

“Don't I? That's a good one, an't it, James? Don't
know Clap Dunn, and his father before him! My

father says, Norman Dunn, and Massy, and Clap into
the bargain, ought to be sent to State's Prison. Don't
know Clap Dunn! Clap, that robbed our hen-roost
when he was seven years old!”

Annie could no longer restrain her bursting indignation.
“If he did, he has never robbed since,” she
said; “and who was it, Mr. Hancock Coles, that robbed
poor old Mrs. Allen of all her plums when he was
twice seven years old? You may look mad, but you
can't deny it. And if poor Clapham has a bad father
and mother, he can't help that; and I don't think they
are any worse than —”

Annie's kind heart checked her, or perhaps it was
a certain innate sense of the hardship of reproaching
a child with a father's wrong-doing. She had that
very morning been present when one of the gossips
of the village had related at the Davises an anecdote
of Coles, Hancock's father, who was a noted horse-jockey,
having taken advantage of the necessities of a
poor woman who had just lost her husband, and so
overreached her in the purchase of a pair of horses
that his conscience forced him to allow her five dollars

over and above the bargain, and that he gave it to
her, saying, “I feel so much for you, ma'am, being
a widow, that I present you five dollars.”[1] Annie
might not have quite comprehended the transaction,
but she perceived that, in addition to dishonesty, there
was meanness and ostentation, and that therefore it
was worse than bare thieving.

We wish that the principles of strict honesty and
unwavering truth, in which Mrs. Davis educated her
children, were universal. Then there would be an
end of the false coloring, the false weighing, the
false counting, the keen bargaining, to which the
greed of gain leads a portion of our New England
people, and which is — we say it with shame and
sorrow — their besetting sin. Greed of gain is the
besetting sin of the most civilized, the best, and the
most favored people of God's earth. My young
friends, reform it, reform it altogether.

Annie had checked herself as she was on the
point of reproaching Hancock with his father's misdeed;
but little Lucy, who shared her sister's resentment

without feeling the same impulse to restrain
it, said, “My Annie means that Clapham's peoples
ain't any worse than your peoples, Mr. Hancock.”

“Take that for your impudence, miss!” said
Hancock, kicking over little Lucy's basket of blackberries;
and he was on the point of stamping on
the fruit and crushing those beautiful, selected berries;
but, seeing Harry and Clapham emerging from
the woodland above, he sneaked off with his companion.
Lucy was left crying bitterly. “He's an
awful boy!” she said; “I'll tell Harry of him, and
I'll tell Clapham every thing he said about him.”

“O, no, no, no, dear Lucy, don't; it will make
the boys so mad; and may be they will have a fight
with Hancock. Don't say one word about it, Lucy.
I will pick up all the berries. Clapham will feel
dreadfully if you tell him. See, they are not the
least hurt, the grass is so clean. Do not say one
word to Clapham. Mother says we must never tell
one person what another says against him; it only
makes more trouble, mother says, and I know Clapham
will feel so bad poor Clapham!”

“I won't tell him then, Annie — but it's too bad;”
and the little creature wiped away her tears with
her stained hands, suppressed her sobs, and cleared
up her face as well as she could, before the boys
came up to them.

“Why, what's the matter, Lucy, darling?” exclaimed
Harry; “the blackberries spilt? O!”

“Is that all?” said Clapham. “Never mind, Lucy;
it's no fault of yours, I dare say — it's a sideling
place here. Don't, Annie, plague yourself to pick
up the rest. I have some first-rate ones here in
this nice paper your mother wrapped the gingerbread
in. I picked them on purpose to cream over
your and Annie's baskets. There,” he added, shaking
them over the tops of their baskets, “there, it's all
neat and complete.”

Lucy's happiness was quite restored. There was
no vestige of the grief and disturbance, except now
and then a glance askance, from her sweet blue
eye, at Annie, which indicated a consciousness that
a great secret was sleeping in her little bosom.

The young people proceeded homeward, and were

again traversing the foot-path along the brook, in
whose pure water they had washed away the stains
on Lucy's face and hands. She was on Clapham's
back. He had gathered for her, by the way, the
golden-rod, asters, and the lovely fringed gentian,
and Annie had tied them in her pocket handkerchief,
which swung on Lucy's arm. The flowers were
peeping out in every direction. They had stopped
under a sumac, whose leaves were already of a brilliant
red, and Harry, at Lucy's request, had pulled
away from the sumac a clematis that was wreathed
around it, and which is scarcely less beautiful in the
silken green tassels of its seed-time, than with its
delicate summer flowers. The whole vine had fallen,
and its branches dropped around the children, so as
to wreathe them together enchantingly. At this moment,
Lyman met them, and the group struck the
painter's eye. He thought he had never seen any
thing so beautiful. “O, stand still!” he said; “stand
still, every one of you, for a few moments. Let the
vine be just where it is over your heads, and shoulders,
and arms. No, Annie, don't move the baskets; leave
your shawl on the ground. O Harry, this is what I
call a painter's opportunity! If I could but give such
coloring as I see now, — Lucy's face so lovely, so
fair on one side, Clapham's —
and that snow against Clapham's brown and ruddy
cheek, and that hair like sunbeams floating over his
massy, dark curls, and that chubby hand over his
shoulder with the handkerchief of flowers, and you
all interwoven in the clematis, and the brook and the
hill side, and the last rays of the sun on the distant
mountain tops, — O, it is a living picture! But I can
do nothing with it,” he said, despairingly, putting up
his pencil; “perhaps, hereafter, I may recall it.”

But their happy day was coming to an end; and
the young people, released from their sylvan bondage,
hastened homeward, stopping only once more, and
then at old Mrs. Allen's, who, as Harry said, was
old and lame, and should not be forgotten. They all
insisted on her taking a portion from their overflowing
baskets; and, as they went away, richer for what they

had imparted, the grateful old lady wiped a tear of
pleasure from her eyes, saying, “Never were there
just such children! Like mother, like children; and
Clapham — they are sort of missionaries to him.
What a smile the boy has! such white teeth! and
he looked so happy, poor child!”

Poor child he was not that day — not to be pitied.
“We have had a real good time — a lucky day,” he
said to his young friends, as they bade good night;
and he went off to sell his berries in the village, to
buy the snuff for his mother, and, last of all, to restore
Mr. Lyman's purse. Lyman said he had not yet
missed it; and, counting the money, he said, “There's
not a penny gone. I never should have known where
I lost it, or suspected who found it,” he said. “Clapham,”
he added, “you are more honest than you have
the name of being.”

“I am,” replied Clapham, blushing, but returning
his glance with a steady eye. “You shall be rewarded
though, Clapham;” and Mr. Lyman offered him
all the silver the purse contained.

“I do not wish any reward,” Clapham said; “but

one thing, Mr. Lyman, I ask of you. Be kind enough
not to tell any one that you lost the purse, or that I
found it.”

“Why, how odd, Clapham!”

“Will you promise this, sir?”

“Yes. But you are a strange boy.”

“Perhaps I am,” said Clapham; and they parted