The three children were waiting
for us there. They looked up at me bashfully and made some request of
their mother.
"They want me to tell you how the teacher has the school picnic here every
year. These don't go to school yet, so they think it's all like the
picnic."
After I had admired the arbor sufficiently, the youngsters ran away to an
open place where there was a rough jungle of French pinks, and squatted
down among them, crawling about and measuring with a string. "Jan wants to
bury his dog there," Antonia explained. "I had to tell him he could. He's
kind of like Nina Harling; you remember how hard she used to take little
things? He has funny notions, like her."
We sat down and watched them. Antonia leaned her elbows on the table.
There was the deepest peace in that orchard. It was surrounded by a triple
enclosure; the wire fence, then the hedge of thorny locusts, then the
mulberry hedge which kept out the hot winds of summer and held fast to the
protecting snows of winter. The hedges were so tall that we could see
nothing but the blue sky above them, neither the barn roof nor the
windmill. The afternoon sun poured down on us through the drying grape
leaves. The orchard seemed full of sun, like a cup, and we could smell the
ripe apples on the trees. The crabs hung on the branches as thick as beads
on a string, purple-red, with a thin silvery glaze over them.
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