more aesthetically for an
occasion like this. I'll tell you what, Miss Pasmer: are you used to
blueberrying?"

"No," she said; "I don't know that I ever went blueberrying before.
Why?" she asked.

"Because, if you haven't, you wouldn't be very efficient perhaps, and so
you might resign yourself to sitting on that log and holding the berries
in your lap, while I pick them."

"But what about the bowls, then?"

"Oh, never mind them. I've got an idea. See here!" He clipped off a
bunch with his knife, and held it up before her, tilting it this way
and that. "Could anything be more graceful! My idea is to serve the
blueberry on its native stem at this picnic. What do you think? Sugar
would profane it, and of course they've only got milk enough for the
coffee."

"Delightful!" Alice arranged herself on the log, and made a lap for the
bunch. He would not allow that the arrangement was perfect till he had
cushioned the seat and carpeted the ground for her feet with sweet-fern.

"Now you're something like a wood-nymph," he laughed. "Only, wouldn't a
real wood-nymph have an apron?" he asked, looking down at her dress.

"Oh, it won't hurt the dress. You must begin now, or they'll be calling
us."

He was standing and gazing at her with a distracted enjoyment of her
pose. "Oh yes, yes," he answered, coming to himself, and he set about
his work.

He might have got on faster if he had not come to her with nearly every
bunch he cut at first, and when he began to deny himself this pleasure
he stopped to admire an idea of hers.

"Well, that's charming--making them into bouquets."

"Yes, isn't it?" she cried delightedly, holding a bunch of the berries
up at arm's-length to get the effect.

"Ah, but you must have some of this fern and this tall grass to go with
it. Why, it's sweet-grass--the sweet-grass of the Indian baskets!"

"Is it?" She looked up at him. "And do you think that the mixture would
be better than the modest simplicity of the berries, with a few leaves
of the same?"

"No; you're right; it wouldn't," he said, throwing away his ferns. "But
you'll want something to tie the stems with; you must use the grass." He
left that with her, and went back to his bushes. He added, from beyond
a little thicket, as if what he said were part of the subject, "I was
afraid you wouldn't like my skipping about there on the rocks, doing the
coloured uncle."

"Like it?"

"I mean--I--you thought it undignified--trivial--"

S