“Still a nimble-toes,” he said, laughing. “Mary, can you do as well?”
“Pooh, yes! Who can’t climb a fence?” The little girl was over it in a minute. The smaller children lay flat on the ground and squirmed through under the lower rail, while one of the boys climbed up, balanced himself on the top rail, then leaped into the grass.
“I see some berries!” cried Katie, and began to pick them.
“We’ll go in farther,” said Martin. “The bushes near the road have been almost stripped. Come on, keep on the path and watch out for snakes.”
There was a well-defined, narrow trail through the timbered land. Though the weeds had been trodden down along each side of it there were dense portions where snakes might have found an ideal home. After a long walk the little party was in the heart of the woods and blackberry bushes, dark with clusters, waited for their hands. Berries soon rattled in the tin pails, though at first many a handful was eaten and lips were stained red by the sweet juice. They wandered from bush to bush, picking busily, with many exclamations--"Oh, look what a big bunch!” “My pail’s almost full!” Little Katie and Charlie soon grew tired of the picking and wandered around the path in search of treasures. They found them--three pretty blue feathers, dropped, no doubt, by some screaming blue jay, a handful of green acorns in their little cups, a few pebbles that appealed to them, one lone, belated anemone, blooming months after its season.
The pails were almost filled and the party was moving up the woods to another patch of berries when little Mary turned to Amanda and said, “Ach, Amanda, tell us that story about the Bear Charm Song.”
“Yes, do!” seconded Charlie. “The one you told us once in school last winter.”
Amanda smiled, and as the little party walked along close together through the woods, she began:
“Once the Indians lived where we are living now---”
“Oh, did they?” interrupted Charlie. “Real Indians, with bows and arrows and all?”