CHAPTER LXIII.
GATHERING APPLES.
Little Paul was standing under the apple tree, with Rose Mason close by. The thick grass under their feet was littered with golden apples, streaked with rosy red, which Jube had shaken from the boughs.
"Here, little missus," cried the negro, looking down through the thick leaves, and balancing a noble apple in his hand. "Hold up your apron, little missus, and down it will come so pretty into the white nest, so."
Rose lifted her little apron of ruffled dimity, and held it up, laughing and shaking her golden curls in the sunbeams, the happiest little creature alive.
"Be careful," cried Paul, looking fondly on the beautiful creature. "Don't you drop it on her head, Jube; it would almost kill her."
Jube laughed, and dropped the apple, which fell plump into the apron, but with a force that tore it from the grasp of those tiny hands; so, after all, the apple rolled away into the grass.
Both Paul and Rose made a plunge. The boy seized upon the apple first, and held it over his head, tempting Rose, with his bright eyes laughing pleasantly. She leaped after it, and danced up and down like a fairy, for her little feet scarcely trampled the grass.
Paul was taller, by a whole foot, than the little girl, so he held the fruit out of reach, smiling with his lips, and laughing with his eyes, at her graceful efforts. Jube got astride a huge limb of the apple tree, and looked down upon the fun, showing his teeth through the leaves. The minister stood at his study window, benignly regarding them, drawn from his manuscript sermon by their riotous shouts of laughter; while his wife, who was sewing on the back porch, sat with her needle half suspended, smiling brightly on the scene.
It was a pleasant sight, and the whole family enjoyed it with all the zest of innocent hearts. The good housewife loved those two children almost as if they had been her own, and as for Jube, the heart must have been hard indeed which did not turn kindly to the good negro, who brought his huge bodily strength to the aid of every thing that required it, and who was good-natured as a Newfoundland dog.