"I am going down to the brook for rose-hips to put about the Christmas-cake," she said.
[CHAPTER XLVI.]
CHRISTMAS.
Patty went out of the house, and across the orchard. The grass over which she took her way was wet with the cold fog that made the air chill. Everywhere the trees and bushes were loaded with crystal drops upon which no sun shone to make them glitter. The fields were faded, and blotched with patches of gray and brown, and a frost-bitten green. Patty had thrown over her shoulders a long cloak, which covered her from head to feet; and as she walked through the fields she might have passed for the spirit of the sombre weather.
Along the margin of the brook which separated the fields of the Putnam place from Dr. Sanford's possessions, the wild roses grew in profusion, and left so many of their scarlet hips behind them, that the birds had not been able to devour the half. Patty moved along among the leafless shrubs, her cloak catching upon the briers, and her fingers suffering not unfrequently from the same sharp cause, while she gathered the rose-hips for which she had come. The brook, which was quite free from ice, and somewhat swollen by rain, gurgled and murmured past her. The drops shook down upon her from the dripping branches, so that by the time she reached Black-Clear Eddy her cloak was pretty thoroughly wet.
She had not been here since the night she threw her ring into the pool. Remembering how clear was the water, she leaned over to see if she could discover the trinket. Looking carefully for some time, she fancied that her eye caught the gleam of gold. Kneeling upon the wet margin of the brook, she bent down, and assured herself that she indeed saw the ring lodged in a tuft of water-grass. Instantly she longed to recover it. She began to bare her arm, and then paused, laughing at her own folly. The pool was something like eight feet deep, and there seemed no way for her to get possession of the ring but by the use of a hook and line. She ruthlessly sacrificed her handkerchief, tearing it into strips; and, fastening a bent hair-pin to the end of this improvised line, with a pebble for a sinker, she began to angle.
"'Simple Simon went a-fishing,'"
she sang to herself,