"
"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.
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