followed him into an olive, orchard of small dimensions. The family
to whom the black dog belonged was there. The father, Bernardo
Esvido, stood on a step-ladder, picking black olives into a bucket
half filled with water, the bucket being fastened to Mr. Esvido's
waist so that he might use both hands, while the water in the bucket
prevented the ripe olives from being bruised. He who picks ripe
olives into a hard bucket knows not his business.

Beneath another olive tree sat the mother, the daughter, and the
son, washing olives in a water-trough. The small black dog raised
his voice, and did his best to inform the Esvidos that a stranger
eyed their olive-washing.

"You read Portuguese?" asked Miss Elizabeth, smiling on the busy
group. Miss Elizabeth was not a book-agent, but, moved by the
religious destitution of the Portuguese, she had devised the plan of
buying at some city book-store Bibles or Testaments in Portuguese,
and then going into the surrounding country and hunting for
Portuguese who could read. To such, on account of their poverty,
Miss Elizabeth often sold for ten cents a Bible she had bought for
forty or sixty cents. She would gladly have given the Bibles free,
but from observation she had become persuaded that those Portuguese
who paid a few cents for a Bile were much more likely to read it
than were those to whom one was given for nothing.

At Miss Elizabeth's question the united Esvido family looked at the
mother. She was the one reader of the group. Many Portuguese do not
read, either in English or in their own language. If a Portuguese
woman reads Portuguese, her neighbors perhaps know of her
accomplishment. Mr. Esvido was proud that his wife knew how to read