false report. Well, it is a silly job, and I am partly to blame."

"How quickly a rash thing can be done!" replied the girl. Her lips were
quivering, and tears so crowded themselves into her eyes that she could
hardly distinguish apples from fern as she continued industriously
searching to hide her weakness.

"As soon as you have finished getting the apples," her aunt said,
descending the ladder, "come down, and we'll go for the holly. There is
nobody on the heath this afternoon, and you need not fear being
stared at. We must get some berries, or Clym will never believe in our
preparations."

Thomasin came down when the apples were collected, and together they
went through the white palings to the heath beyond. The open hills were
airy and clear, and the remote atmosphere appeared, as it often appears
on a fine winter day, in distinct planes of illumination independently
toned, the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscape streaming
visibly across those further off; a stratum of ensaffroned light was
imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these lay still remoter
scenes wrapped in frigid grey.

They reached the place where the hollies grew, which was in a conical
pit, so that the tops of the trees were not much above the general level
of the ground. Thomasin stepped up into a fork of one of the bushes, as
she had done under happier circumstances on many similar occasions,
and with a small chopper that they had brought she began to lop off the
heavily berried boughs.

"Don't scratch your face," said her aunt, who stood at the edge of the