“There was a little bit of the village through which we must pass, and here there were sundry dangers. Old Sawyer’s black and white sow had got loose and certainly looked formidably large and fierce as she shoved her snout with deep grunts into the ditch beside the road. Then a farmer’s collie-dog—a particular friend of mine, but a stranger and therefore a possible foe to my companion—came prancing up. These and other sources of terror, such as the village flock of geese, made it essential that we should proceed with caution and with such strength as a union of hands might afford. However, it did not take long to bring us to the end of the cottages and out on to the road beside which I had seen the blackberries hanging all ready to be picked. It was a good wide road with a broad strip of grass on either side, along one of which was a row of telegraph posts which brought the single wire by which we were connected with the busy world. The hedges were high and bushy—full of honeysuckle, now out of bloom, wild roses by this time showing only their scarlet fruit, wild hops climbing everywhere with rapid eager growth, clematis giving promise of a hoary show of old man’s beard, and in and out and over and through it all the long thorny brambles with their many-coloured leaves and their shiny black and red and green berries.
The Backberwy People.
“With just one look round to assure herself that nobody and nothing was about, Helen let go my hand and rushed off like a mad thing along the grass, just recovering herself with a gasp from a bad stumble over a dried and hidden heap of road scrapings. All of a sudden she stopped. She had caught sight of the ‘backberwies’ and of the numberless other brilliant and tempting objects in the hedge. In a moment her imagination had caught fire. ‘I wonders!’ she said as I came up. Then, when her breath was quite recovered, she added very earnestly, ‘Can us get them backberwy people? It’s vewy dangewous, isn’t it? Look at them nettles and fistles! Is them the backberwies’ policemen—I wonders?’
“If they were, they proved very useful as far as warding off attacks on the part of a little bare-legged maiden went. However, by dint of very careful steering she managed to get close up to a splendid cluster of fruit and had picked some four or five when one of the sharp hooky thorns tore her finger and brought tears into her eyes. Even so, the play went on. ‘Oh! the backberwies’ dog has bit me!’ she cried, as she held up the poor little finger for me to see. It was really a nasty prick, and I could see that it hurt her a good deal, so I tied her handkerchief round it, and said we would try to find a place further on where the dogs were not so savage.
The Backberwy Ball.
“We went on a yard or two and passed close to one of the telegraph posts through which a light breeze was humming. Helen stopped short with eyes dilated and open mouth. ‘Oh! I wonders!’ she cried. ‘What is it?’ I asked her. She whispered to me to keep quite still while she went to see, and proceeded to put her ear against the post, holding up one finger of the injured hand in warning to me not to stir. ‘There’s beautiful music,’ she said at last very softly, ‘there’s a ball, and all the little backberwies is dancing!’ I said that if the old blackberries let the young ones go to a ball without them it served them right if they got picked themselves. I then suggested that we should go on to the next post and see what was going on there. As we went Helen noticed that near each one there was a heap of stones and a bare gravelly patch of ground. ‘Them is the backberwy houses,’ she said, ‘and all the backberwies are out, and the children are gone to a dancing class, so the old backberwies send them by theirselves.’ So the little difficulty which I had mentioned was explained away, though to the vividness of her imagination it had evidently presented a real difficulty and had not been forgotten.
“Presently, after listening to the music in several telegraph posts, saying that there was an organ in one and fiddles in another, while in a third she declared that the blackberries were singing, she returned to the hedge and the more serious duty of filling her little basket. All the time, however, she kept up a comment upon what she saw. The red hips and haws were ‘the backberwies’ soldiers,’ the elderberries were their clergymen, and the sloes were guards. Every few minutes she stopped in a sort of ecstasy at all that was around her, and gazing in one direction and another would softly say, ‘Oh! I wonders!’ It was evidently a revelation of beauty to her, and at the same time a scene of mystery, a sort of fairyland where everything thought and lived and breathed.
The Wicked Soldiers.
“At last the basket was getting nearly full, and in stretching up for some specially fine berries a dog-rose thorn tore the back of my hand, leaving a long scratch. Helen’s anger knew no bounds.
“‘The wicked, wicked soldiers,’ she said, and then taking several of the bright red hips she tore them into fragments and threw them away. And now we had wandered backwards and forwards along that special bit of hedge until all the blackberries within reach were picked, and only the baby green ones were left. ‘Will they die if we leaves them all alone?’ she said, and then she gathered as many as possible, and carrying them in her two hands placed them in little heaps near each telegraph post that they might be noticed when the balls and concerts were over.