One Sunday afternoon as I was riding over to the Grove, I met Burton plodding homeward along the grassy lane, walking with hanging head and sagging shoulders. He looked like a man in deep and discouraged thought, and when he glanced up at me, with a familiar defensive smile twisting his long lips, I knew something had gone wrong.
"Hello," I said. "Where have you been?"
"Over to Aunt Sallie's," he said.
His long, linen duster was sagging at the sides, and peering down at his pockets I perceived a couple of quarts of lovely Siberian crab-apples. "Where did you get all that fruit?" I demanded.
"At home."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Take it back again."
"What do you mean by such a performance?"
With the swift flush and silent laugh which always marked his confessions of weakness, or failure, he replied, "I went over to see Nettie. I intended to give her these apples," he indicated the fruit by a touch on each pocket, "but when I got there I found old Bill Watson, dressed to kill and large as life, sitting in the parlor. I was so afraid of his finding out what I had in my pockets that I didn't go in. I came away leaving him in possession."
Of course I laughed—but there was an element of pathos in it after all. Poor Burt! He always failed to get his share of the good things in this world.