“We had other use for rose berries when I was a girl,” said Red Blossom. “If a young man went at evening to talk with his sweetheart, he put a ripe rose berry in his mouth to make his breath sweet.”
“I wonder if Old Bear put a rose berry in his mouth,” said Old-Owl Woman.
“I think he put two rose berries in his mouth,” said Red Blossom, smiling.
All laughed again but Pink Blossom; she walked on, saying nothing.
TWELFTH CHAPTER
THE CORN HUSKING
After the June berry season came choke-cherries. We did not gather so big a store of these, but they were harder to prepare for drying. I can yet see old Turtle, with her gnarled, wrinkled fingers, plying the crushing stones. She dropped three or four cherries on a round stone and crushed them with a smaller stone held in her palm. The pulp she squeezed through her palms into lumps, which she dried in the sun.