coffee, as you come up the hill, there is an odour for you! And it was
good to see Harriet.

"Harriet," I said, "you are a sight for tired eyes."



CHAPTER IV


THE GREEN PEOPLE

I have always had a fondness, when upon my travels about the world of
the near-by woods and fields, for nipping a bit of a twig here and there
and tasting the tart or bitter quality of it. I suppose the instinct
descends to me from the herbivorous side of my distant ancestry. I love
a spray of white cedar, especially the spicy, sweet inside bark, or a
pine needle, or the tender, sweet, juicy end of a spike of timothy grass
drawn slowly from its close-fitting sheath, or a twig of the birch that
tastes like wintergreen.

I think this no strange or unusual instinct, for I have seen many other
people doing it, especially farmers around here, who go through the
fields nipping the new oats, testing the red-top, or chewing a bit of
sassafras bark. I have in mind a clump of shrubbery in the town road,
where an old house once stood, of the kind called here by some the
"sweet-scented shrub," and the brandies of it nearest the road are quite
clipped and stunted I'm being nipped at by old ladies who pass that way
and take to it like cat to catnip.