"Well, not exactly what you'd call the gentlemanly sort.""I thought Mr. Boardman was a great friend of yours?""He is. He is one of the best fellows in the world. But you must have seen that he wasn't a swell.""I should think he'd be glad he was doing something at once. If I were a--" She stopped, and they laughed together. "I mean that I should hate to be so long getting ready to do something as men are.""Then you'd rather begin making wall-paper at once than studying law?""Oh, I don't say that. I'm not competent to advise. But I should like to feel that I was doing something. I suppose it's hereditary."Mavering stared a little. "One of my father's sisters has gone into a sisterhood. She's in England.""Is she a--Catholic?" asked Mavering.
"She isn't a Roman Catholic."
"Oh yes!" He dropped forward on his knees again to help her tie the bunch she had finished. It was not so easy as the first.
"Oh, thank you!" she said, with unnecessary fervour.
"But you shouldn't like to go into a sisterhood, I suppose?" said Mavering, ready to laugh.
"Oh, I don't know. Why not?" She looked at him with a flying glance, and dropped her eyes.
"Oh, no reason, if you have a fancy for that kind of thing.""That kind of thing?" repeated Alice severely.
"Oh, I don't mean anything disrespectful to it," said Mavering, throwing his anxiety off in the laugh he had been holding back. "And I beg your pardon. But I don't suppose you're in earnest.""Oh no, I'm not in earnest," said the girl, letting her wrists fall upon her knees, and the clusters drop from her hands. "I'm not in earnest about anything; that's the truth--that's the shame. Wouldn't you like,"she broke off, "to be a priest, and go round among these people up here on their frozen islands in the winter?""No," shouted Mavering, "I certainly shouldn't. I don't see how anybody stands it. Ponkwasset Falls is bad enough in the winter, and compared to this region Ponkwasset Falls is a metropolis. I believe in getting all the good you can out of the world you were born in--of course without hurting anybody else." He stretched his legs out on the bed of sweet-fern, where he had thrown himself, and rested his head on his hand lifted on his elbow. "I think this is what this place is fit for--a picnic; and I wish every one well out of it for nine months of the year.""I don't," said the girl, with a passionate regret in her voice. "It would be heavenly here with--But you--no, you're different. You always want to share your happiness.""I shouldn't call that happiness. But don't you?" asked Mavering.
"No. I'm selfish."
"You don't expect me to be believe that, I suppose.""Yes," she went on, "it must be selfishness. You don't believe I'm so, because you can't imagine it. But it's true. If I were to be happy, Ishould be very greedy about it; I couldn't endure to let any one else have a part in it. So it's best for me to be wretched, don't you see--to give myself up entirely to doing for others, and not expect any one to do anything for me; then I can be of some use in the world. That's why Ishould like to go into a sisterhood."
Mavering treated it as the best kind of joke, and he was confirmed in this view of it by her laughing with him, after a first glance of what he thought mock piteousness.
XVI.
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.""Do you think so?" she asked, with the reluctance that complies.
"Yes, but not right away. I'll carry them out of the woods, and we'll form the procession just before we come in sight."Every one on the ledge recognised the tableau when it appeared, and saluted it with cheers and hand-clapping. Mrs. Pasmer bent a look on her daughter which she faced impenetrably.
"Where have you been?" "We thought you were lost!" "We were just organising a search expedition!" different ones shouted at them.
The lady with the coffee-pot was kneeling over it with her hand on it.
"Have some coffee, you poor things! You must be almost starved.""We looked about for you everywhere," said Munt, "and shouted ourselves dumb."Miss Anderson passed near Alice. "I knew where you were all the time!"Then the whole party fell to praising the novel conception of the bouquets of blueberries, and the talk began to flow away from Alice and Mavering in various channels.
All that had happened a few minutes ago in the blueberry patch seemed a far-off dream; the reality had died out of the looks and words.
