"Father can still head up a barrel better than any of us," Leonard remarked to Miss Hargrove.
"Well, my dear," said the old gentleman, "I've had over half a century's experience."
"It's time I obtained some idea of rural affairs," said Gertrude to Webb. "There seem to be many different kinds of apples here. Can you easily tell them apart?"
"Yes, as easily as you know different dress fabrics at Arnold's. Those umbrella-shaped trees are Rhode Island greenings; those that are rather long and slender branching are yellow bell-flowers; and those with short and stubby branches and twigs are the old-fashioned dominies. Over there are Newtown pippins. Don't you see how green the fruit is? It will not be in perfection till next March. Not only a summer, but an autumn and a winter are required to perfect that superb apple, but then it becomes one of Nature's triumphs. Some of those heaps on the ground will furnish cider and vinegar. Nuts, cider, and a wood fire are among the privations of a farmer's life."
"Farming, as you carry it on, appears to me a fine art. How very full some of the trees are! and others look as if they had been half picked over."
"That is just what has been done. The largest and ripest apples are taken off first, and the rest of the fruit improves wonderfully in two or three weeks. By this course we greatly increase both the quality and the bulk of the crop."
"You are very happy in your calling, Webb. How strange it seems for me to be addressing you as Webb!"
"It does not seem so strange to me; nor does it seem strange that I am talking to you in this way. I soon recognized that you were one of those fortunate beings in whom city life had not quenched nature."
They had fallen a little behind the others, and were out of ear-shot.
"I think," she said, hesitatingly and shyly, "that I had an ally in you all along."