“I’ve told you a dozen times! He didn’t mean anything anyhow. He only said, that when the big sycamore tree went into Massachusetts I could go.”
“What a crazy thing to say, wasn’t it?”
“It was because we had been talking about the play of Macbeth. You remember, ’Till Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane.”
“Oh, yes, and then it did come—by a trick.”
“Yes, the men came, carrying branches. We’d been talking about it, discussing some point, and then—it seemed clever, I suppose—to Appleby, and he wrote that about the sycamore.”
“Meaning—never?”
“Meaning never.”
“But Birnam Wood did go.”
“Only by a trick, and that would not work in this case. Why, are you thinking of carrying a branch of sycamore into Massachusetts?”
Maida returned his smile as she answered: “I’d manage to carry the whole tree in, if it would do any good! But, I s’pose, old Puritan Father, you’re too conscientious to take advantage of a trick?”