“What you thought about everything?” said Daisy.

“Yes; every verse and question, she would say, ’What do you think about it?’ and I didn’t like that, because I never thought anything.”

Whereat Daisy fell into a muse.  Her question recurred to her; but it was hardly likely, she felt, that her little companion could enlighten her.  Nora was a bright, lively, spirited child, with black eyes and waves of beautiful black hair; neither at rest; sportive energy and enjoyment in every motion.  Daisy was silent.

“What is supposed to be going on here?” said a stronger voice behind them, which brought both their heads round.  It was to see another head just making its way up above the level of their platform; a head that looked strong and spirited as the voice had sounded; a head set with dark hair, and eyes that were too full of light to let you see what colour they were.  Both children came to their feet, one saying, “Marmaduke!” the other, “Mr. Dinwiddie!”

“What do two such mature people do when they get together?  I should like to know,” said the young man as he reached the top.

“Talking, sir,” said Daisy.

“Picking wintergreens,” said the other, in a breath.

“Talking!  I dare say you do.  If both things have gone on together, like your answers,” said he, helping himself out of Nora’s stock of wintergreens,—­“you must have had a basket of talk.”

“That basket isn’t full, sir,” said Daisy.

“My dear,” said Mr. Dinwiddie, diving again into his sister’s, “that basket never is; there’s a hole in it somewhere.”

“You are making a hole in mine,” said Nora, laughing.  “You sha’n’t do it, Marmaduke; they’re for old Mrs. Holt, you know.”

“Come along, then,” said her brother; “as long as the baskets are not full the fun isn’t over.”

And soon the children thought so.  Such a scrambling to new places as they had then; such a harvest of finest wintergreens as they all gathered together; till Nora took off her sunbonnet to serve for a new basket.  And such joyous, lively, rambling talk as they had all three, too; it was twice as good as they had before; or as Daisy, who was quiet in her epithets, phrased it, “it was nice.”  By Mr. Dinwiddie’s help they could go faster and further than they could alone; he could jump them up and down the rocks, and tell them where it was no use to waste their time in trying to go.

They had wandered, as it seemed to them, a long distance—­they knew not whither—­when the children’s exclamations suddenly burst forth, as they came out upon the Sunday-school place again.  They were glad to sit down and rest.  It was just sundown, and the light was glistening, crisp and clear, on the leaves of the trees and on the distant hill-points.  In the west a mass of glory that the eye could not bear was sinking towards the horizon.  The eye could not bear it, and yet every eye turned that way.