ee 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 another echoing, softly echoing, laugh;
"it's the fun of being torn and stained and scratched, and having one's
hat pulled off one's hair, and the hair off one's head."

Diana heard it all, they were not far from her; and she heard, too, Mr.
Knowlton's little remarks, half gallant, half mocking, but very
familiar, she thought. No doubt, to his sister; but how to Miss Masters
too? Yet they were; and also, she noticed, he kept in close attendance
upon the latter young lady; picking into her basket, getting her out of
her numerous entanglements with the blackberry branches, flattering and
laughing at her; Gertrude was havi