"
I looked at her vigorous shoulders and was disposed to agree with her
statement. It is a splendid thing, Aunt Jennie, for girls to be strong
and sturdy enough to help themselves, sometimes, as well as to help
others. I have a notion that it is a good thing that the day is passing
away of the girls of the fainting sort who were brought up to backboards
and mincing manners. That girl has self-reliance and willingness stamped
all over her, and it is good to see.
The men were going well. At first I had been surprised at the slowness of
their gait, but I soon realized that they could keep it up all day, in
spite of their loads. Yet once an hour they stopped for a breathing spell
of a few minutes, during which they wiped their foreheads and sometimes
had a pull at their pipes. We no longer had any view of the sea. Below us
and to one side, Sweetapple River was brawling over rapids, resting in
pools, or riffling over shallows. It wound its way through a little
wooded valley, fairly well grown with small spruces and firs whose somber
greens were often relieved by the cheery, lighter hue of birches. The
junipers, as they call tamaracks in Newfoundland, were beginning to shed
their yellowing needles, and many of them were quite bare, or else dead,
with gnarled limbs fantastically twisted.
Several times we put up ptarmigans, that flew away with the curious
"brek-kek-kex" that is their rallying cry, showing white spots on their
dull-hued plumage, which would soon grow into the pure, snowy livery of
winter days.
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