We found them growing on a hillside on stunted trees no larger than bushes, as wild and untended as a patch of blackberries whose briers were all around us and hindered our progress. They were a hard, cherry-sized fruit all shades of ripening-red and purple, thick upon each tree, but the trees were separated by clumps of sassafras and the low brittle bayberry whose pale wax clusters are used for candle-making. I tasted a beach-plum and found it juicy and tart, but almost all pit.
“The green ones is good, too,” Mrs. Dove advised me. “They make it jell.”
The day was as warm as Indian summer, now that the early fog had melted, and the moist heat, oozing up from the humid ground, was soothing to my tired body. The convolutions of my brain seemed to uncoil and extend themselves into a flat surface, like a piece of table-linen laid in the sun to bleach. I did not pick as many beach-plums, perhaps, as Mrs. Dove, but I was more benefited by the day’s work. I began to feel revived and almost normal.
“I brought lunch along,” announced my wonderful companion. She pulled some paper-wrapped packages out of her capacious pockets, and we sat on a rock and ate lobster-sandwiches and muffins spread with sweet butter till I was ashamed. It seemed a long time since I had tasted anything that I ate. I felt so grateful that I wanted to cry. Mrs. Dove sensed my mood and my need, and kept right on mothering me.
“We’ll put the plums on as soon as we get back,” she said, “and have some jam for supper, maybe, or to-morrow when your husband comes, anyway. He’ll enjoy them; mine always does.”
It was hard to tell her that to-morrow I was going to leave, her plans sounded so pleasant.
“That house is funny, Mrs. Dove,” I said; “I don’t know whether I will live in it.”
“I thought you’d come to that!” she answered.
And another time, when we were picking plums, I tried again to explain to her how things stood, because I felt that if she were going to be any help to me she must know the truth about the House of the Five Pines, in so far as that was possible.
“I know what you heard crying in the captain’s buggy, that night you told me about when he brought Mattie home.”