the strawberries and placed
herself on a rock.

"Where's my helper? -- O yonder, -- somebody's got hold of him.
Lizzie, -- who'd have thought we should be so well off for
beaux here in the mountains?"

The other's brow and lip changed, but she stood silent.

"They don't act like farmer's sons, do they? I never should
have guessed it if I had seen them anywhere else. Look,
Lizzie, -- now isn't he handsome? I never saw such eyes."

Elizabeth did not look, but she spoke, and the words lacked no
point that lips could give them.

"I am thankful, Rose, that my head does not run upon the
things that yours does!"

"What does yours run upon then?" said Rose pouting. "The other
one, I suppose. That's the one you were helping with your
strawberries just now. I dont think it is the wisest thing Mr.
Haye has ever done, to send you and me here; -- it's a pity
there wasn't somebody to warn him."

"Rose!" -- said the other, and her eyes seemed to lighten, one
to the other, as she spoke, -- "you know I don't like such talk
-- I detest and despise it! -- it is utterly beneath me. You may
indulge in all the nonsense you please, and descend to what
you please; -- but please to understand, _I will not hear it_."

Miss Cadwallader's eye fairly gave way under the lightning.
Elizabeth's words were delivered with an intensity that kept
them quiet, though with the last degree of clear utterance;
and turning, as Rufus came up, she gave him a glare of her
dark brown eyes that astonished him, and made off with a quick
step to a part of the field where she could pick strawberries
at a distance from everybody. She picked them somehow by
instinct; she did not know what she was doing; her face
rivalled their red bunches; and she picked with a kind of
fury. That being the only way she had of venting her
indignation, she threw it into her basket along with the
strawberries. She hadn't worked so hard the whole afternoon.
She edged away from the rest towards a wild corner, where amid
rocks and bushes the strawberry vines spread rich and rank and
the berries were larger and finer than any she had seen. She
was determined to have a fine basketful for Winifred.

But she was unused to such stooping and steady work, and as
she cooled down she grew very tired. She was in a rough grown
place and she mounted on a rock and stood up to rest herself
and look.

Pretty -- pretty, it was. It was almost time to go home, for
the sun was out of their stra