While talking they had gained the declivity of the hill, and sat down.
"Only look at that troop, Wal."
It was, indeed, a curious spectacle, that peasant train,—some driving asses, others mules, and still others oxen attached to their queer-looking carts heaped with olives, and all making for the gap between the hills, through which the boys had seen the church spire.
Spreading their blankets beneath a shelving rock, they rolled themselves in them, and began to converse.
"How sweet this air smells!" said Ned, snuffing the odor of the wild thyme, lavender, marjoram, absinthe, and other fragrant plants among which they lay.
"I don't think much of it," said Walter, who was not in a humor to be pleased with anything. "I call it a God-forsaken country, all dried up, no water to drink without travelling ten miles, and then sucking it out of the rocks. Here we've passed two or three beds of brooks all dried up; plenty of water when you don't want it, none when you do; and not a stick of wood to build a camp fire. This smell is not to be mentioned in the same day with the fragrance of good pine woods, and I know it isn't half so wholesome. Give me a good apple orchard in bloom, and you may have all these miserable herbs."
"I'm sure," said Ned, "I'd rather have a tumbler of cider than all their sour wine; and what is an olive to an apple?"
"Yes, Ned, to the cat-heads that grow down behind our pig-sty. They may talk about the juice of the grape; give me the good maple sirup, and sap, and a country where a man can earn enough to afford to eat meat."
"I know it, Walter; and where the women don't have to shovel dirt, hoe, reap, and work just like an Indian squaw. I twigged that. And then brag about their politeness!"
"I never heard there was any politeness among the Griffins; but I wonder what my father would say to see mother shovelling sand, or lugging manure on her back up the side of a mountain. Guess he'd roar some; guess she'd have to scud into the house quicker."