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bushes to the orchard. A moment later, the basket on her arm, she was strolling with careful indifference down the road past the house.
    Turning her head, she could see the young man standing by the car, his back turned to her. Too bad; she would have liked to see at last what poor Charles really looked like. Gina was still invisible, but Suzanne was there, still suffering under a sense of outrage and yelpinghysterically at the girl in the white beret. But small dogs fortunately can tell no tales.
    The children returned from their expedition at dusk, Martin carrying a gallon jar of new cider and Caroline a smaller brown demijohn to be put aside for vinegar, gifts from the Rowes. They were full of all they had seen on the drive, Martin especially. They had gone through the famous swamp, they’d stopped at a house where an old man had two tame coons in his corncrib; they had watched the apples being crushed, and the mill was worked by a gas engine like the one Neal used to saw wood, and they had drunk the fresh juice in tumblers as it ran from the press. It was good, Martin said, but not very fizzy yet. Neal Rowe had said it couldn’t hurt anyone, it was just like drinking fresh apples.
    Nevertheless it became evident, from Caroline’s increasing air of aloofness, that all was not entirely well within; she refused supper, let Martin do most of the talking, and only roused once to say with an injured air:
    â€œShirley drank just as much cider as I did, and I don’t see why she hasn’t got just as worse a stomach ache as I’ve got!”
    â€œHow do you know she hasn’t?” Kay asked.
    â€œI know she hasn’t, because I asked her coming home on the truck.”
    â€œI expect she is more used to it than you are,” Mrs. Ellis suggested.
    â€œIf you ask me, you’re both of you little pigs,” said Garry with sisterly bluntness. “Martin hasn’t got any stomach ache.”
    â€œMartin’s a boy,” Caroline returned, as though that settled the question. “It don’t matter what boys eat an’ drink!”
    â€œIf I did have I wouldn’t talk about it, anyway,” Martin told her, conscious of an uncomfortable tightness about his own waistband but unwilling to admit it. “If you aren’t careful, Caroline, it might all turn to vinegar inside you, because that’s what cider does when you leave the cork out.”
    â€œThen I should think you’d some of you might have told me about it before I went!” Caroline sniffled, and was led off to bed with a hot water bottle for comfort.
    â€œThe new people were up at the house again today,” Kay announced as the two girls were washing supper dishes. “Mrs. Rowe saw them drive by.”
    â€œYes? I thought I noticed a car there, coming home.”
    â€œWhat’s the joke about it?”
    â€œOh, nothing. Sometime maybe I’ll tell you.”
    And that was all Garry would say.

Across the Road
    AFTER Thanksgiving the weather turned suddenly cold—a sharp businesslike cold, with an air of having come to stay. “Nearly an inch of ice on the rain barrel this morning,” Garry would announce cheerfully, warming her chilled fingers as she watched through the window four bobbing heads in woolen caps—Shirley and Caroline, Martin and Jimmie—hurrying down the hill to catch the school bus. Big Bertha did her duty nobly, though her huge stomach seemed to consume as much wood as might run a locomotive until Mary Rowe, slipping over one morning to borrow some coffee, gave them a lesson in the proper setting of drafts.
    â€œWood stoves are all right,” she said, “but I guess you’ve got to be brought up with them to know their ways. There—now your heat’ll go where it belongs, not all up the stovepipe.”
    â€œDoes it often get much colder than this?” asked Kay, who was the shivery one of the family.
    â€œColder?” Mary