illy repeated. "I was a-showin' Dickey my
apple-tree, and Uncle Hiram he picked out another one, and he give it
to him."

"Well, I wouldn't have believed it," said Mrs. Rose.

Nobody else would have believed that Hiram Fairbanks, careful old
bachelor that he was, would have been so touched by the Dickey boy's
innocent, wistful face staring up at the boughs of Willy's apple-tree.
It was fall, and the apples had all been harvested. Dickey would get no
practical benefit from his tree until next season, but there was no
calculating the comfort he took with it from the minute it came into his
possession. Every minute he could get, at first, he hurried off to the
orchard and sat down under its boughs. He felt as if he were literally
under his own roof-tree. In the winter, when it was heavy with snow, he
did not forsake it. There would be a circle of little tracks around the
trunk.

Mrs. Rose told her brother that the boy was perfectly crazy about that
apple-tree, and Hiram grinned shamefacedly.

All winter Dickey went with Willy to the district school, and split wood
and brought water between times. Sometimes of an evening he sat soberly
down with Willy and played checkers, but Willy always won. "He don't try
to beat," Willy said. Sometimes they had pop-corn, and Dickey always
shook the popper. Dickey said he wasn't tired, if they asked him. All
winter the silver spoons appeared on the table, and Dickey was treated
with a fair show of confidence. It was not until spring that the
sleeping suspicion of him awoke. Then one day Mrs. Rose counted her
silver spoons, and found only twenty-three teaspoons. She stood at her
kitchen table, and counted them over and over. Then she opened the
kitchen door. "Elviry!" she called out, "Elviry, come here a minute!
Look here," she said, in a hushed voice, when Miss Elvira's inquiring
face had appeared at the door. Miss Elvira approached the table
tremblingly.

"Count those spoons," said Mrs. Rose.

Miss Elvira's long slim fingers handled the jingling spoons. "There
ain't but twenty-three," she said finally, in a scared voice.

"I expected it," said Mrs. Rose. "Do you s'pose he took it?"

"Who else took it, I'd like to know?"

It was a beautiful May morning; the apple-trees were all in blossom. The
Dickey boy had stolen over to look at his. It was a round hill of
pink-and-white bloom. It was the apple year. Willy came to the stone
wall and called him. "Dickey," he cried, "Mother wan