“Oh, Dot! aren’t those blueberries?” the older girl added.
“Of course they are, Tess Kenway,” agreed her sister. “My, I could eat just bushels of ’em.”
They scrambled up the bank and climbed the wall. Not only was there this clump of berry bushes which they had first sighted; but back of the wall was a great field, rocky and barren otherwise, but a fine berry pasture.
Farther out where the sun shone, the berries were larger and more had ripened. The little girls went on and on, picking the berries in handfuls and actually cramming them into their mouths. They were very hungry.
Their fingers and lips became stained; and if the truth were told some of the crushed berries left stains upon their mussed frocks as well as upon their faces. They reached the farther end of the field before they realized that they were so far from the road.
Tess was about to suggest that they go back. Somebody might come by on the lonely road they had been following. And then she saw the orange and green petticoat fluttering in the bushes.
“Oh, Dot! what’s that, do you suppose?” Tess whispered, seizing her sister quickly by the hand.
“Oh-ee! A bear?” returned Dot, without even seeing the gay garment beyond the brush clump.
“Goodness! A bear that color?” demanded Tess, with some exasperation.
Suddenly the wearer of the gay garment stood up. She was a very brown woman, with great hoops of gold in her ears, and she wore other gay garments besides the green and orange petticoat.