With the assistance of the boys, they lifted the sacks and the apples went tumbling down through the opening. But Peggy and Katherine were aghast to see what kind of apples they were.
“Why, some of those I poured down were just—awfully bad,” declared Peggy. “In fact, quite decomposed,” she added facetiously.
“Don’t they get sorted out down below?” Katherine inquired anxiously when the last of the sacks had been emptied.
But the cider man only laughed.
When they went down, the apples fell into a kind of wagon without wheels, which moved slowly by machinery, till it reached a certain place, where heavy weights came down from above and slowly crushed the fruit. Very soon a small stream of clear amber juice ran down a trough and into a large hogshead.
The cider man filled their jug, and then gave them each a glass, and told them to drink all they wanted from the hogshead, without additional charge, since he had made the cider just for them.
Sweet, clear and refreshing as any cider in the world, this came to their thirsty lips. And yet—the girls thought they had never enjoyed cider less. The memory of that collection of apples that had gone hurtling down the chute!
The boys, however, were enthusiastic, because Peggy and Katherine had made it, and they praised it highly enough so that the kindly owner of the mill did not notice the heroic efforts of his two feminine guests to seem appreciative.
Out into the sunlight again the little party came, Jim carrying the jug nonchalantly on his shoulder.
“Rebecca at the well,” he laughed; “here she is in moving pictures.”