244 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



mind. He knows the people wlio live in 

 tlie three houses below us, and speaks of 

 them racily, yet in a tone of brotherly kind- 

 ness. I call his attention to two women 

 whom I have descried in the nearest pasture, 

 a bushy place, yellow with goldenrod and 

 pointed with young larches and firs. They 

 wear men's wide-brimmed straw hats (a 

 black-and-tan coUie is with them), and one 

 carries a broad tin dish, which she holds in 

 one hand, while she picks berries with the 

 other. Pretty awkward business, an old 

 berry-picker thinks. 



Yes, the keeper of the tower says, they 



are Mrs. and Miss ; one lives in 



the first house, the other in the second. 

 Now they are leaving the pasture, stopping 

 once in a while to strip an uncommonly in- 

 viting bush (so I interpret their move- 

 ments), and we follow them with our eyes. 

 The older one, a portly body, walks halfway 

 across a broad field with her companion, 

 seeing her so far homeward, — and perhaps 

 finishing a savory dish of gossip, — and then 

 returns to her own house, still accompanied 

 by the dog. Scarcity of neighbors conduces 

 to neighborliness. 



