She was right; she had to run to catch up with them, and that persistent weakness did not make it easy. She was panting and had a stitch in her side by the time she did.

But it was worth it; they led her down little lanes between fields of tobacco until they came to a stretch that was entirely hedged in blackberry bushes. There were several other children out here already, but the fruit was so thick that it hadn’t been picked over. Anna gratefully settled herself down in the weeds and set to picking in earnest.

When she glanced over at the other children, it appeared that for most of them, far more fruit was going into mouths than into baskets. How the Sawyers could manage that, after that enormous dinner, she had no idea. It was very like a magic trick.

As for her—this was easy work, sitting in the shade of the hedge and moving over little by little as she cleared each section of hedge of its ripe berries. Eventually Hal sauntered over to her, swinging his half-empty basket, and looked down at her full one, an expression of admiration on his face. “Say, Anna Jones,” he declared. “Y’all are the best picker I done ever seed! I’ll jest take thet basket fer y’all, ’cause I knowed it’s gosh-darned heavy, an’ leave this ’un—”

“Y’all kin leave yore basket, Hal Sawyer,” she retorted. “But y’all’re leavin’ mine too! I didn’ pick them berries so’s y’all could et half!”

He flushed, caught.

“Y’all go he’p Sue,” she continued. “Mebbe ’tween y’all, thet basket’ll git fillt.”

Shamefaced, he went away with his proverbial tail between his legs to help his little sister—and cram berries into his mouth.

By the time she had filled his basket as well as her own, the sun was westering and the Sawyers were ready to trudge back. That basket she had filled was mortal heavy—and bigger than Hal’s—so she let him take it for her on the solemn pledge that he wouldn’t eat any berries out of it on the way home. It was probably an easy promise for him to make, seeing how many he’d already eaten.

Missus Sawyer greeted them and their bounty with pleasure and enthusiasm, stowed the baskets under the sink, and directed them to wash their hands again. Then it was grace around the table, and cold bread, butter and jelly, and the remains of the stew, thinned down, bones strained out, to make a fine soup. Nothing like the thin cabbage-and-onion soups Ma made, that gave you wind without satisfying your hunger.

But then, it was very clear that though Jeb Sawyer and his family were quite modest about it, they were a lot richer than the Jones family was, and Missus Sawyer had pretty well cottoned to that fact. Anna tried to be cheerful about that, but it seemed to her that Missus Sawyer regarded her with pity. And pity is not a comfortable thing to endure when it’s directed at you. After dinner, she helped with the dishes, then joined the others on the front porch where Missus Sawyer read to them—not from the Bible, as Anna would have expected, but from a book of very strange stories indeed. German Popular Tales and Household Stories, it said on the worn cover of the book. Hal obviously considered himself too old for this stuff, and made a great show of carving something with a penknife he was clearly very proud of, but Anna could tell he was listening anyway. The stories were fascinating—and horrifying. Girls drowned by their jealous sisters, their bodies dismembered and turned into harps—a brother and sister from a family as poor as her own, sent off into the wilderness by their mother for spilling the milk that was to be their supper and taken prisoner by a child-eating witch—a naughty little girl who stumbled upon a house owned by three bears—though the fact that the bears had a house and furnishings did make it clear that this tale, at least, was completely made up.