“Been berrying?” inquired David. The woman nodded again.
David looked scrutinizingly at her pail. “I saw better berries real thick a piece back,” said he.
The woman murmured something. In spite of herself, a tear trickled over her fat, weather-beaten cheek. David saw the tear, and something warm and glorious like sunlight seemed to waken within him. He felt such tenderness and pity for this poor feminine thing who had not the strength to keep the tears back, and was so pitiably shorn of youth and grace, that he himself expanded. He had heard in the town something of her history. She had made a dreadful marriage, tragedy and suspicion had entered her life, and the direst poverty. However, he had not known that she was in the vicinity. Somebody had told him she was out West.
“Living here?” he inquired.
“Working for my board at a house back there,” she muttered. She did not tell him that she had come as a female “hobo” in a freight-car from the Western town where she had been finally stranded. “Mrs. White sent me out for berries,” she added. “She keeps boarders, and there were no berries in the market this morning.”
“Come back with me and I will show you where I saw the berries real thick,” said David.
He turned himself about, and she followed a little behind, the female failure in the dust cast by the male. Neither spoke until David stopped and pointed to some bushes where the fruit hung thick on bending, slender branches.
“Here,” said David. Both fell to work. David picked handfuls of berries and cast them gaily into the pail. “What is your name?” he asked, in an undertone.
“Jane Waters,” she replied, readily. Her husband's name had been Waters, or the man who had called himself her husband, and her own middle name was Jane. The first was Sara. David remembered at once. “She is taking her own middle name and the name of the man she married,” he thought. Then he asked, plucking berries, with his eyes averted:
“Married?”