her breast heaves as she comes up
with the cart and hails the driver. How she blushes and looks down,
and then, having gained her purpose, runs off again too full of joy
even to thank the messenger, running a race, as it were, with her own
delight. And then, once back at the house, she looks round anxiously
to every side, lest any should have seen her, and goes in to her work
again....

Filled with a quiet joy, Olof opens the packet.

A big, dark red apple carries her greeting.

"The very colour of the rowans!" he cries--as if the girl had chosen
that very one from a great store, though he knows well enough it was
likely the only one she had.

And his heart swells with joy and pride at the thought. "Was there
ever such a greeting--or such a girl!"

Once more his mind goes back to that happy autumn; he turns the apple
in his hand caressingly, and looks out through the window and smiles.

Then he notices that the apple seems harder to the touch in one place,
as if to call his attention to something. He looks at it again, and
sees that the skin on one side is raised, with a cut all round, is if
done with a knife. He lifts the flap of skin, and it comes away like a
lid; underneath is a folded slip of paper.

"More!" he cries, and with trembling hands, with joy at heart,
he unfolds it. Only a tiny fragment, and on one side a few words
awkwardly traced with pencil:

"Now I know what it is to be sad. Have you quite forgotten your Rowan?
I think of you every night when I go to sleep."

The apple falls into his lap, the paper trembles in his hand, and a
moisture dims his eyes.

He looks up. Great soft snowflakes are dropping slowly to the ground.

Minutes pass. The twilight deepens, till at last all is darkness, but
he sits there still looking out, with the paper in his hand.

He can no longer see--but he feels how the great soft snowflakes are
still falling....

DAISY

The daisy bloomed on the window-sill ... in the window of a little
room.

In spring and summer the daisy blooms--this one bloomed in the winter
too.

"And I know, and you know why you bloom in the winter," said the girl.
"'Tis to smile at him in greeting."

The daisy blooms only a few months together ... this one was in flower
already when Christmas came, and flowered the rest of the winter
through, more beautiful every day.

"And I know, and you know how long you will bloom. 'Twas when I set
you here at first it all began ... an