Mrs.Field eked it out in every way that she could.

She had a little vegetable garden and kept a few hens.

As the season advanced, she scoured the berry pastures, and spent many hours stooping painfully over the low bushes.

Three months from the time at which she came to Elliot, on the day on which her neighbors started from Green River to visit her, she was out in the pasture trying to fill her pail with blueberries.
All the sunlight seemed to centre on her black figure like a burning-glass; the thick growth of sweet-fern around the blueberry bushes sent a hot and stifling aroma into her face; the wild flowers hung limply, like delicate painted rags, and the rocks were like furnaces.

Mrs.Field went out soon after dinner, and at half-past five she was still picking; the berries were not very plentiful.
Lois, at home, wondered why she did not return, and the more because there was a thunder-storm coming up.