ose which a boy of Rollo's age gathers for his mother.

The party walked on. Mrs. Holiday's attention was soon strongly
attracted to the various groups of peasants which she saw working in the
fields, or walking along the road. First came a young girl, with a
broad-brimmed straw hat on her head, driving a donkey cart loaded with
sheaves of grain. Next an old and decrepit-looking woman, with a great
bundle of sticks on her head. It seemed impossible that she could carry
so great a load in such a manner. As our party went by, she turned her
head slowly round a little way, to look at them; and it was curious to
see the great bundle of sticks--which was two feet in diameter, and four
or five feet long--slowly turn round with her head, and then slowly turn
back again as she went on her way.

Next Mrs. Holiday paused a moment to look at some girls who were hoeing
in the field. The girls looked smilingly upon the strangers, and bade
them good morning.

"Ask them," said Mrs. Holiday to Rollo, "if their work is not very
hard."

So Rollo asked them the question. Mrs. Holiday requested him to do it
because she did not speak French very well, and so she did not like to
try.

The girls said that the work was not hard at all. They laughed, and went
on working faster than ever.

Next they came to a poor wayfaring woman, who was sitting by the
roadside with an infant in her arms. Rollo immediately took out one of
the little cakes from the parcel in his knapsack, and handed it to the
child. The mother seemed very much pleased. She bowed to Rollo, and
said,--

"She thanks you infinitely, sir."

Thus they went on for about three quarters of an hour. During all this
time Mrs. Holiday's attention was so much taken up with what she
saw,--sometimes with the groups of peasants and the pretty little views
of gardens, cottages, and fields which attracted her notice by the road
side, ever and anon by the glimpses which she obtained of the stupendous
mountain ranges that bordered the valley on either hand, and that were
continually presenting their towering crags and dizzy precipices to view
through the opening of the trees on the plain,--that she had not time to
think of being fatigued. At length Rollo asked her how she liked the
walk.

"Very well," said she; "only I think now I have walked full as far as I
should ever have to go at home, when making calls, before coming to the
first house. So as soon as you can you may find me a plac