style="font-size:15px;"> “Hey! Stop that!” shouted Nellie, “or I’ll let them go!”
Instantly every boy stood still.
“Come on,” called Cora to the other two girls, “we must help Nellie.”
As quickly as they could trudge along the rough pathway, Cora, Bess and Belle hurried to where Nellie stood with the dogs.
“Call the boys back to the shed,” shouted the girl, “then I can take the dogs to their kennels.”
“Come here, boys!” called Cora. “Come back to the shed, and we will see fair play!”
The words “fair play” had a magical effect on the strikers. They now jumped between the rows, and it would be safe to say that not one of them, in the return, stepped on a single berry.
“All right, miss,” answered the lad called Narrow. “We goes back to the field, if Andy gets his tally-sticks.”
“Does this woman own the patch?” asked Cora.
“Never!” replied one of the boys. “She’s only the manager. The boss comes up every night to pay us our coin.”
“Then we should see him, I suppose,” said Cora, as Nellie walked past with the dogs close beside her, each animal wagging his appreciation for the girl that led them on.
“Aunt Delia scares easy,” whispered Nellie, almost in Cora’s ear. “Just chuck a big bluff and she wilts.”
Cora smiled. She was happily versed in the ways and manners of those who “had not had a chance.”
“I am so afraid she will – hurt Rose,” sighed Belle. “Oh dear me! What a place!”
“But I think it rather fortunate we were here,” replied Cora. “These youngsters can scarcely take their own part – prudently.”
Andy hung back near the shed. He was still trying to choke down the tears. How could he ever pay three dollars and seventy-five cents for that crate of crushed berries? And it had not been his fault.
The strikers stood around Cora, each little fellow displaying his preference for “a good honest strike” to that of hard work, in the sun, on a berry patch.
“Narrow speaks fer us,” announced a sturdy little German lad. “Eh, Narrow?”
“We all goes back, if Andy gets his sticks,” spoke Narrow, who was evidently the strike leader.
“Well, come along,” ordered Cora, feeling very much like a strike breaker, “and we will see what Mrs. Ramsy says.”
Led by the motor girls the procession wended its way back to the shed.
“Never mind, Andy,” said a boy called Skip, who really did seem to skip rather than walk, “we will see you ‘faired.’”
Andy rubbed his eyes more vigorously than before. Cora was in the shed, and Nellie hurried away with the dogs, promising to send Mrs. Ramsy down from the house. Meanwhile Cora had ample opportunity to get acquainted with her little band of strikers. They were very eager to talk, in fact all seemed anxious to talk at once. And their grievance against the woman “who ran the patch” seemed to have begun long before her present difficulty with Andy.
“She’s as mean as dirt to them two girls,” said one urchin, “and anybody kin see that them girls is all right.”
“They pick out here from the break of day until the moon is lit,” said another, “and after that they has to work in the house. There’s a couple of boarders there and the girls keeps the rooms slick.”
“Boarders?” asked Bess.
“Yep, and one old dame is a peach,” continued the boy, not coarsely but with eager enthusiasm.
“The one with the sparklers,” added another. “Hasn’t she got ’em though?” and he smacked his lips as if to relish the fact.
“There comes Ramsy,” whispered a third. “Whew! But she looks all het up!”
The woman did look that way. Her face was as red as the berries in the trays and her eyes were almost dancing out of their sockets.
Cora spoke before anyone else had a chance to do so.
“The boys are willing to arbitrate,” she said. Then she felt foolish for using that word. “They have come for terms,” she said, more plainly.
“Terms!” repeated the woman scornfully. “My terms is the same now as they was first. Andy Murry pays for that crate!”
“If the crate is paid for will it belong to him?” asked Cora.
The woman stopped, as if afraid of falling into some trap. “I don’t care who owns ’em, when he pays for ’em. But he sneaked out one bunch of tallies – ”
“He did not!” shouted a chorus. “He earned every one he’s got and the ten that you’ve got!”
“And it was you who spoiled the berries by pushing him into them,” shouted some others, “and we are here to see him faired.”
Cora was perplexed. She wanted to save more trouble, yet she did not feel it “fair” to give in to the woman.
“Your berries are spoiling in the fields now,” she suggested. “Why don’t you give in, and let the boys go back to work?”
“Me give in to a pack of kids!” shouted the enraged woman.
“She is always sour on Andy because his mother won’t do her dirty washing,” explained the German boy.
“My mother is sick – and she can’t wash,” sobbed the unfortunate Andy.
“Yep, and that money of his’n was for her, too,” put in Skip.
At this point another figure sauntered down from the house.
“There comes Mrs. Blazes!” put in Narrow. “She couldn’t miss the show.”
The woman who came down the path sent on before her the rather overpowering odor of badly mixed perfumes.
“Look at her sparklers,” whispered a boy to Cora, “that’s why we call her ‘Blazes.’”
A black lace scarf was over the woman’s head and now the “sparklers,” or diamonds that she wore, in evident flashy taste, could be seen at her throat, and on her fingers. Bess smiled to Belle, and Cora turned to the boys.
“We must finish up this business,” she said. “It is getting late, and we have to go to Chelton.”
“Go ahead!” called the urchins.
“Fork out Andy’s sticks,” shouted some others.
“What is the crate worth?” asked Cora.
“It was worth three dollars and seventy-five cents,” said the woman, “before that scamp deliberately set in it.”
Cora did not intend to argue.
