in a half aside to Diana.
"Now he would like that I should return the compliment and call him
Evan; but I won't. What do you do, when men call you by your
Christian name?"
She was trying to read Diana as she spoke, eyeing her with sidelong glances, and as they went, laying her daintily gloved hand on Diana's arm to help herself along. Diana was astounded both at her confidence and at her request for counsel; but as to meet the request would be to return the confidence, she was silent. She was thinking, too, of the elegant little boot Mrs. Reverdy had displayed, and contrasting it with her own coarse shoes. And how very familiar these two were, that he should speak to her by her first name so!
"Miss Starling!" cried the other lady behind her, – "do you know we have been following your lead all the way we were coming this morning?"
"Mr. Knowlton said so," Diana replied, half turning.
"Aren't you very much flattered?"
This time Diana turned quite, and faced the two.
"My mother was driving, Mrs. Reverdy."
"Ah?" said the other with a very amused laugh. "But you could have done it just as well, I suppose."
What does she mean? thought Diana.
"Can you do anything?" inquired the gay lady on her arm. "I am a useless creature; I can only fire a pistol, and leap a fence on horseback, and dance a polka. What can you do? I dare say you are worth a great deal more than me. Can you make butter and bread and pudding and pies and sweetmeats and pickles, and all that sort of thing? I dare say you can."
"I can do that."
"And all I am good for is to eat them! I can do that. Do you make cheeses too?"
"I can. My mother generally makes the cheese."
"O, but I mean you. What do people do on a farm? women, I mean. I know what the men do. You know all about it. Do you have to milk the cows and feed everything? – chickens and pigs, you know, and all that?"
"The men milk," said Diana.
"And you have to do those other things? Isn't it horrid?"
"It is not horrid to feed the chickens. I never had anything to do with the pigs."
"O, but Evan says you know how to harness horses."
Does he? thought Diana.
"And you can cut wood?"
"Cut wood!" Diana repeated. "Did anybody say I could do that?"
"I don't know – Yes, I think so. I forget. But you can, can't you?"
"I never tried, Miss Masters."
"Do you know my cousin, Mr. Masters? – the minister, you know?"
"Yes, I know him a little."
"Do you like him?"
"I like him, – yes, I don't know anything against him," said Diana in great bewilderment.
"O, but I do. Don't you know he says it is wicked to do a great many things that we do? he thinks everybody is wicked who don't do just as he does. Now I don't think everybody is bound to be a minister. He thinks it is wicked to dance; and I don't care to live if I can't dance."
"That is being very fond of it," said Diana.
"Do you dance her, in the country?"
"Sometimes; not very often."
"Isn't it very dull here in the winter, when you can't go after blackberries?"
Diana smiled. "I never found it dull," she said. Nevertheless, the contrast smote her more and more, between what Mr. Knowlton was accustomed to in his world, and the very plain, humdrum, uneventful, unadorned life she led in hers. And this elegant creature, whose very dress was a sort of revelation to Diana in its perfection of beauty, she seemed to the poor country girl to put at an immense distance from Mr. Knowlton those who could not be charming and refined and exquisite in the like manner. Her gloves, – one hand rested on Diana's arm, and pulled a little too; – what gloves they were, for colour and fit and make! Her foot was a study. Her hat might have been a fairy queen's hat. And the face under it, pretty and gay and wilful and sweet, how could any man help being fascinated by it? Diana made up her mind that it was impossible.
The rambling path through the woods brought the party out at last upon a wild barren hill-side, where stones and a rank growth of blackberry bushes were all that was to be seen. Only far off might be had the glimpse of other hills and of patches of cultivation on them; the near landscape was all barrenness and blackberries.
"But where are the rest of the people?" said Mrs. Reverdy with her faint laugh. "Are we alone? I don't see anybody."
"They are gone on – they are picking," Diana explained.
"Hid in this scrubby forest of bushes," said her brother.
"Have we got to go into that forest too?"
"If you want to pick berries."
"I think we'll sit here and let the rest do the picking," said Mrs. Reverdy, looking with charming merriment at Gertrude. But Gertrude was not so minded.
"No, I'm going after berries," she said. "Only, I don't see where they are. I see bushes, and that is all."
"Just here they have been picked," said Diana. "Farther on there are plenty."
"Well, you lead and we'll follow," said Mr. Knowlton. "You lead, Miss
Starling, and we will keep close to you."
Diana plunged into the blackberry bushes, and striking off from the route she guessed the other pickers had taken, sought a part of the wilderness lower down on the hill. There was no lack of blackberries very soon. Every bush hung black with them; great, fat, juicy beauties, just ready to fall with ripeness. Blackberry stains spotted the whole party after they had gone a few yards, merely by the unavoidable crushing up against the bushes. Diana went to work upon this rich harvest, and occupied herself entirely with it; but berry-picking never was so dreary to her. The very sound of the berries falling into her tin pail smote her with a sense of pain; she thought of the day's work before her with revulsion. However, it was before her, and her fingers flew among the bushes, from berry to berry, gathering them with a deft skilfulness her companions could not emulate. Diana knew how they were getting on, without using her eyes to find out; for all their experience was proclaimed aloud. How the ground was rough and the bushes thorny, how the berries blacked their lips and the prickles lacerated their fingers, and the stains of blackberry juice were spoiling gloves and dresses and all they had on.
"I never imagined," said Mrs. Reverdy with a gay laugh, "that picking blackberries was such a serious business. O dear! and it's only just eleven o'clock now. And I am so hungry!"
"Eat blackberries," said Gertrude, who was doing it diligently.
"But I want to carry some home."
"You can buy 'em. We came for fun," was the cool answer.
"Fun?" said Mrs. Reverdy with
