wife remain a sweetheart, and every husband continue a lover."

So he proved that though a husband he was still a lover, by always
doing what she asked him and more. When the children were born and
grew up, their father told them about their mother's likes and
dislikes, her tastes and her wishes, and warned them always to be
careful. So it was altogether a very happy family.

One day, the wife and mother said to her husband, that she had a great
longing for apples. She would like to taste some like those which he
long ago gave her. At once, the good man dropped what he was doing and
hurried off to his neighbor, who had first presented him with a
trayful of these apples.

The farmer not only got the fruit, but he also determined that he
would plant a tree and thus have apples for his wife, whenever she
wanted them. So he bought a fine young sapling, to set in his orchard,
for the children to play under and to keep his pantry full of the fine
red-cheeked fruit. At this his wife was delighted.

So happy enough--in fact, too merry to think of anything else, they,
both husband and wife, proceeded to set the sapling in the ground. She
held the tree, while he dug down to make the hole deep enough to make
sure of its growing.

But farmers are sometimes very superstitious. They even believe in
luck, though not in Puck. Some of them have faith in what the almanac,
and the patent medicine may say, and in planting potatoes according to
the moon, but they scout the idea of there being any fairies.