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The path they were following led them through a wood of pine-trees carpeted with heather and blue-berry, and upon this pleasant carpet, Dick, not without some seriousness, made her sit down. 'Esther! he began, 'there is something you ought to know. You know my father is a rich man, and you would think, now that we love each other, we might marry when we pleased.
"Yes," whispered Mary, while the poor woman's face flushed, and her lip quivered. Mary glanced at Edwin, and remembered her errand. "Mrs. Graffam," said she, "I know that the blue-berry parties must be a great trouble to you, and we would not have come here for water, only Eddy is not very well." "You are welcome to as much water as you want," interrupted Mrs.
They were above the timber line, though there was little timber below it, the side of the mountain having been fire-swept long before that. The only green to be seen immediately about them were the blue-berry bushes and similar mountain vegetation that flourished in the crevices of the rocks.
The red and white trillium, the sarsaparilla, Solomon's seal, "moose-missy" and black-berry bushes, and, farther up, the blue-berry bushes, all hung full of blossoms, a small Alpine flower of seven white petals excited much curious comment, for in spite of its resemblance to the wind-flower, no one seemed able to classify it.
These berries, hanging in countless clusters upon their low bushes among the shrubbery, were at least worth going to see. Such was the opinion prevalent in that region; and the sight of merry "blue-berry companies," sometimes in wagons, sometimes on foot, was among the most common of our midsummer morning scenes.
The blue-berry companies often encountered them upon the plain, but found them shy as young partridges, dodging through the bushes, and skulking away as though kidnappers were in pursuit.
This seemed true enough; for when any visitor to the plain called at Graffam's for a drink of water, they were never invited to enter. The water was handed them through a small opening, and the mother was seldom visible. It was one of the brightest of our July mornings, when a blue-berry company started from the village before-mentioned.
So, all of a sudden, he fell straight through a thick fringe of blue-berry bushes and went sprawling and clawing down the face of an almost perpendicular steep. "The distance of his fall was not far short of thirty feet, and he brought up with a bump which left him not breath enough to squeal. The ground was soft, however, with undergrowth and debris, and he had no bones broken.
The lean and hungry pastures of Bellingham were prolific in inexhaustible harvests; what they bore on their surface may hint of something deeper and more perennial. The pastures and borders of the woods were covered with patches of huckleberry and blue-berry bushes, and over every stone heap clambered the low blackberry vines with racemes of luscious fruit.
"It was about the end of the blue-berry season when Teddy Bear lost his big, rusty-coated mother and small, glossy black sister, and found himself completely alone in the world. They had all three come down together from the high blue-berry patches to the dark swamps to hunt for roots and fungi as a variation to their fruit diet.
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