Page 51 of 63 BLUEBERRYING. - Rollo at Play

"But, father, they must be good boys, or they would not want to show us the blueberries. If they were bad, selfish boys, they would want to keep all the good places to themselves."

If Rollo had only asked his father, in a modest manner, how it could be that the boys were bad, when they wanted to show him the best place for blueberries, it would have been very proper; but his manner of speaking showed a silly confidence in his own opinion, which was very wrong. His father, however, did not attempt to reason with him, but only said,

"I think they are bad boys, for I overheard them using bad language; and I wish you to have nothing to do with them."

He then found a good place for them to begin to gather their berries. It was a beautiful spot of open ground, between the thick woods on one side, and a broken, rocky precipice on the other.

Uncle George took Jonas forward alone, until they were out of sight, and presently returned without him. Rollo asked where Jonas was gone, and his uncle told him that that was a secret at present. They heard, soon after, the strokes of his hatchet in the woods, on before them, but could not imagine what he could be doing.

Thus things went on very pleasantly, and they gathered a large quantity of berries. There was, indeed, in the course of the day, a serious difficulty between Rollo and the bad boys; and there is an account of it given in the next story of "TROUBLE ON THE MOUNTAIN." With Ibis exception, every thing went on well until about, noon, when Rollo observed that Jonas had been missing a long time.

THE SECRET OUT.

"Where is Jonas, all this time?" said Rollo to Lucy.

Lucy said that he had been busy, a long time, doing something over beyond some rocks, but she did not know what, for her father told her she must not go to see. Rollo wondered what the secret was, and he was just going to ask his father to let him go and see what Jonas was doing, when they saw him coming out from the bushes. He came up to Rollo's father, and told him that it was all ready. Then Rollo's father called to all the company, and told them it was time to stop gathering berries, and they might take up their baskets and follow him.

The baskets and pails were heavy and full, and the whole party walked along, carrying them carefully towards the place where Jonas had come from. Rollo's Hither led the way. They entered into a little thicket, and passed through it by a narrow path. They came out presently into a sort of opening, on a brow of the mountain. On one side they could look down upon a vast extent of country, exhibiting a beautiful variety of forests, rivers, villages, and farms. On the other side was a rocky precipice, rising abruptly to a considerable height, and then sloping off towards the summit of the mountain. They walked along a few steps on a smooth surface of the rock, between patches of grass and blueberry-bushes, until Lucy and Rollo ran forward to a brook which came foaming down the precipice, and then, after tumbling along over rocks a little way, took another foaming leap down the mountain, and was lost among the trees below.

		"Poverty in the rich one is to despise the poor person; ignorance, in the sage one is to despise the ignoramus." Constancio C. Vigil