“No, I think not,” said mother, who never needed him when he didn’t wish to be needed. “Jane and I are going to drive down to the village to get a few groceries and other things. Would you care to go along?”
“Not to-day, thank you, ma’am,” and he was off.
I peeped out the window and saw that he was making for the Chester place as fast as his legs would carry him. Really, it was too bad of Dick to treat me so!
“You’d like to go, wouldn’t you, Cecil?” asked mother. “I think it will do you good to get away from this place for a while.”
But I had a sort of deadly fear that if I left the place, it would somehow get beyond my grasp entirely. I might wake up and find it all a dream. So I declined, too, and in the course of half an hour, Abner and I saw mother and Jane drive away down the road. Then, with the whole afternoon before me, I resolutely put away from me the thought of Dick’s treachery, and turned anew to the solution of the mystery.
“Abner,” I asked, as we turned back together to the house, “did you ever hear of an apple-tree called the rose of Sharon?”
“The rose o’ Sharon? Why, certainly, miss. It’s a big, red winter apple, but it don’t bear as well as it might, an’ it ain’t so very tasty. The Baldwin beats it.”
“But is there one in the orchard?”
“Yes—jest one—away over yonder in the corner near the fence. You can’t miss it. It’s the last tree as you cross the orchard. It’s an old feller, an’ a tough one—all the other trees that was near it has rotted or blowed down.”
“Very well,” I said; “and thank you.”