She dived into the cool cavern beneath the mossy log and came out with their dinner. Sandy helped her unpack it feverishly. Mother had put up a very comforting lunch for a starving boy and girl; thick sandwiches of bread and pork, scones soaked in Maple Syrup, a half-dozen cookies, a bottle of milk and two generous wedges of pie. 

 When Sandy had eaten enough to make speech possible he pointed triumphantly to his full pail. 

 "Say! What do you think? I've beat you!"  He cried in amazement, "I did a perfect moose of a day's work. The quarter's mine!" 

 "Well, I've just as much right to it as you have," declared Christina, who did not believe in letting her good deeds waste their sweetness on the desert air of a berry patch.  "I had my pail heaped a dozen times, and shook down too, and Gavin Hume spilled all his on an ant hill, and he said Old Skinflint would thrash him, so I gave him mine." 

 "You did!" Sandy grunted. Christina was always doing things like that. "Well you're a silly. Why can't he keep his berries when he picks 'em? Never mind," he added, having reached the pie, and feeling generous, "I'll give you half the money, and we'll get some gum and a box o' paints." 

 Christina did not dare confess how she had planned to spend the money, and was not much comforted by his offer. Even paints would not permanently improve one's complexion. 

 "Sandy," she said at last, with much hesitation, "do you,—who do you think is the prettiest girl in our school?" 

 Sandy stared. He belonged to the Stone Age as yet, and knew nothing of the decorative, and less about girls. He had no notion that they were classified at all, except as little girls and big girls. 

 "How do I know?" he enquired, rather indignantly, as though his sister had suspected him of secret knowledge of a crime.  "I don't know any that's good lookin'," he added conclusively. 

 "Our Mary's awful pretty," suggested Christina pensively. 

 "Is she?"  Sandy lay back in gorged content, and gazed up into the swaying green sea of the Maples.  "I bet she knows it mighty well, then, let me tell you." 

 "I heard the Grant Girls and Mrs. Johnnie Dunn talkin', when I was away back by Grants' fence. They were talkin' about our girls, and Flora Grant said they were all,—said that Ellen and Mary were so good-lookin' 

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