an orchard that bears like ours.'

In the middle of the orchard we came upon a grape arbour, with seats
built along the sides and a warped plank table. The three children
were waiting for us there. They looked up at me bashfully and made some
request of their mother.

'They want me to tell you how the teacher has the school picnic here
every year. These don't go to school yet, so they think it's all like
the picnic.'

After I had admired the arbour sufficiently, the youngsters ran away
to an open place where there was a rough jungle of French pinks, and
squatted down among them, crawling about and measuring with a string.

'Jan wants to bury his dog there,' Antonia explained. 'I had to tell him
he could. He's kind of like Nina Harling; you remember how hard she used
to take little things? He has funny notions, like her.'

We sat down and watched them. Antonia leaned her elbows on the table.
There was the deepest peace in that orchard. It was surrounded by a
triple enclosure; the wire fence, then the hedge of thorny locusts, then
the mulberry hedge which kept out the hot winds of summer and held fast
to the protecting snows of winter. The hedges were so tall that we could
see nothing but the blue sky above them, neither the barn roof nor the
windmill. The afternoon sun poured down on us through the drying grape
leaves. The orchard seemed full of sun, like a cup, and we could smell
the ripe apples on the trees. The crabs hung on the branches as thick as
beads on a string, purple-red, with a thin silvery glaze over them.
Some hens and ducks had crept through the hedge and were pecking at
the fallen apples. The drakes were handsome fellows, with pinkish grey
bodies, their heads and necks covered with iridescent green feathers
which grew close and full, changing to blue like a peacock's neck.
Antonia said they always reminded her of soldiers--some uniform she had
seen in the old country, when she was a child.

'Are there any quail left now?' I asked. I reminded her how she used to
go hunting with me the last summer before we moved to town. 'You weren't
a bad shot, Tony. Do you remember how you used to want to run away and
go for ducks with Charley Harling and me?'

'I know, but I'm afraid to look at a gun now.' She picked up one of the
drakes and ruffled his green capote with her fingers. 'Ever since I've
had children, I don't like to kill anything. It makes me kind of faint
to wring an old goose's neck. Ain't that st