"Your gran'marm knows how to handle a horse. Now if I's to crawl
back and take a nap, and you's to run the team into any accident, I'd
have to bear all the blame."

Robert protested: and when Zene had shifted his responsibility to
his satisfaction, he crept back and leaned against the goods, falling
into a sound sleep.

The boy drove slowly forward. It seemed that old gray and old white
also felt last night's vigils. They drowsed along with their heads
down through a landscape that shimmered sleepily.

Robert thought of gathering apples in the home orchard: of the big
red ones that used to fall and split asunder with their own weight,
waking him sometimes from a dream, with their thump against the sod.
What boy hereafter would gather the sheep-noses, and watch the early
June's every day until their green turned suddenly into gold, and one
bite was enough to make you sit down under the tree and ask for
nothing better in life! He used to keep the chest in his room floored
with apples. They lay under his best clothes and perfumed them. His
nose knew the breath of a russet, and in a dark cellar he could smell
out the bell-flower bin. The real poor people of the earth must be
those who had no orchards; who could not clap a particular comrade of
a tree on the bark and look up to see it smiling back red and yellow
smiles; who could not walk down the slope and see apples lying in
ridges, or pairs, or dotting the grass everywhere. Robert was half-asleep,
dreaming of apples. He felt thirsty, and heard a humming like the
buzz of bees around the cider-press. He and aunt Corinne used to sit
down by the first tub of sweet cider, each with two straws apiece,
and watch their faces in the rosy juice while they drank Cider from