"And yet I don't know that I could say 'yes,' if Earle asked me to marry him. I might, and then repent, and take it back. I suppose, if he asked father and mother, they would say 'yes,' and be fearfully awkward about it."
"You shall not talk so about them!" said Mattie, indignantly.
"I don't feel to them as you do—why is it? I don't feel a part of the Brace family. I like you, Mattie; father amuses me with his outspoken, homely ways; I don't consider mother much. She is good, but commonplace, like brown bread. In fact, you are all too rustic, and homely, and pious, and common-sensical for wicked me. Are you done with that butter? Why don't it grow made? I am sick of life. Earle is off to Brakebury for his mother. It is only half-past eight, and I feel as if I had been up a century. Come with me to get blackberries."
"I cannot. I have much dairy work to do yet," said Mattie.
"I wish you would go for blackberries for supper," said Patty Brace, coming in. "You don't seem disposed to do anything useful, Doris—suppose you try that."
"I take care of my room, and my clothes," pouted Doris, "and that nearly kills me. I wish I had a maid!"
Patty laughed.
"Well, child, the woods are cool and beautiful, and you are tired of doing nothing. Take this basket, and try and fill it with blackberries."
Fearful of being asked to do some more practical duty if she rejected this, Doris picked up the basket, put on a pair of gloves, tied her sun-hat down under her distracting little chin, and set forth toward the knoll, a place famous for blackberries. The grass was long and thick, the aftermath of clover loaded the air with fragrance, scarlet creepers ran along the hedges, and at the knoll, with purple stems and green and orange leaves, grew the blackberries in globules of polished jet. An inspiration of industry seized Doris, and she filled her basket; the soft little tips of her fingers were dyed crimson with the fruit. She lingered over her task. Earle might return, and it would be pleasant under the trees, birds singing and grass rustling about them, while Earle talked poetry to her.
But Earle did not come, and something in the silence of nature set this thoughtless creature to thinking.