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tree above her, landing just
    within reach. She picked it up, rubbed it on her skirt, put it into her
    apron, then took it out again and took a bite. She picked up a cull; it
    was wormy on the underside. So was the next one. She hoped she wasn’t
    eating the only good apple she was to find that day, when another one
    fell about a foot from her. It was perfect, and it was followed by another
    and another. Suddenly she straightened and looked at the tree. There was
    an apple ladder leaning against the trunk, and just where it tapered and
    disappeared among the upper branches, there was a pair of boots, with
    legs in them.
    “Who’s there?” she said, rather loudly. She was feeling foolish.
    “Just us apples,” said a voice.
    “Well, it’s very kind of you to persuade your little friends to jump
    into my arms.”
    There was a sawing noise, and then a gnarled branch fell to earth,
    looking like a withered arm amputated at the shoulder. The branch was
    followed by the owner of the voice backing down the ladder, so that
    Claris saw legs, then hips, then a yellow flannel shirt, and finally the dark
    head turning to her with deep brown eyes. It was Danial Haskell.
    “Good afternoon, Mr. Apple,” said Claris. Danial made a little bow.
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    He had a pruning saw in his hand, and now that she paid attention to
    what was on the ground among the windfalls, she could see that he must
    have been working in the orchard all morning. There were withered
    boughs everywhere.
    Danial seemed a little taller than he had when they met in the
    summer; perhaps the difference was in his boots. He offered her the dark
    serious face, the deep eyes, as he had before.
    “I didn’t know you were an orchardist,” she said for want of any-
    thing better.
    “I keep apples and pears at home,” said Danial. “I noticed last time
    I was onto the main that Miss Clossy’s trees were about worn out, and
    I thought a little pruning might encourage them.”
    “That’s very kind of you.”
    He shrugged.
    “Is she kin to you?”
    “No. But she’s got no one to do for her, and I like apple trees.
    You don’t remember me, do you?”
    They were standing in the sunshine, he with his saw in his hand,
    and she with the apronful of apples he had thrown to her. Now she was
    taken aback.
    “Certainly I remember you. You brought me ice cream at the town
    picnic.”
    “I mean from when we were small.”
    She was greatly surprised. He was right; she did not remember him,
    at least not yet.
    “I came into the village one winter when my mother was doctoring.
    We stayed with the minister, and I went to the village school.”
    She still didn’t remember.
    “You were just a little thing. You sat up close to Miss Clossy’s
    desk, in front of your sister Mary.”
    Something was coming back to her. A boy the age of her brother
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    Simon, but not nearly as far along in school. A boy who loved poetry . . .
    who stood up in front of the class, so nervous he was shaking and her
    heart had gone out to him. It was a lovely poem that she had remembered
    and learned herself when she got bigger.
    “You said the snow poem,” she said to him. It was like trying to
    describe a dream that changes and disappears the moment you touch
    words to it. But she could see that she was right . . . he was the boy who
    had said the snow poem.
    “The snow had begun in the gloaming,
    And busily all the night
    Had been heaping field and highway . . .”
    She said with him: “With a silence deep and white.” There had
    been a boy, as old as her brother Simon, who sat in back with the big
    boys, but who kept to himself and seemed shy, and had long dark eye-
    lashes and such dark eyes. He didn’t go to their church, and she hadn’t
    known what his name was, but one day . . . this was so odd, it was like
    the moment in Scripture when Mary Magdalene is looking into the empty
    tomb, and yet when Jesus walks right up and speaks