The clouds sailed across the irregular space of pale blue Northern sky which the break in the woods opened for them overhead. It was so still that they heard, and smiled to hear, the broken voices of the others, who had gone to get berries in another direction—Miss Anderson's hoarse murmur and Munt's artificial bass. Some words came from the party on the rocks.
“Isn't it perfect?” cried the young fellow in utter content.
“Yes, too perfect,” answered the girl, rousing herself from the reverie in which they had both lost themselves, she did not know how long. “Shall you gather any more?”
“No; I guess there's enough. Let's count them.” He stooped over on his hand's and knees, and made as much of counting the bunches as he could. “There's about one bunch and a half a piece. How shall we carry them? We ought to come into camp as impressively as possible.”
“Yes,” said Alice, looking into his face with dreamy absence. It was going through her mind, from some romance she had read, What if he were some sylvan creature, with that gaiety, that natural gladness and sweetness of his, so far from any happiness that was possible to her? Ought not she to be afraid of him? She was thinking she was not afraid.
“I'll tell you,” he said. “Tie the stems of all the bunches together, and swing them over a pole, like grapes of Eshcol. Don't you know the picture?”
“Oh yes.”
“Hold on! I'll get the pole.” He cut a white birch sapling, and swept off its twigs and leaves, then he tied the bunches together, and slung them over the middle of the pole.
“Well?” she asked.
“Now we must rest the ends on our shoulders.”