And many a man gets sold.”
Sally’s falsetto voiced this choice ditty with unction, as she entered with an enormous load of wood in her thin arms. She deposited the wood with a bang.
“Sakes!” said Temperance. “I wonder if she sings them songs to the preacher?”
Whereupon Sally, in vindication of her judgment, began a lugubrious hymn.
“Stop it,” said Temperance. Sally stopped.
Beneath the trees Vashti peeled her apples busily, the narrow parings of the greenings twined about her white wrist, the thin slices fell with little splashes into the bowl of water which was to prevent them turning brown before being cooked. Miss Tribbey’s apple-sauce was always like white foam. A voyaging wasp came, and settling upon the cores was very soon drunk, so that he was an easy prey to a half dozen ants which wandered by that way. The distant buzz of the threshing mill filled the air with a drowsy murmur as if thousands of bees hummed above a myriad flowers, here and there a thistle-down floated glistening in the sun. The scent of the overblown flowers mingled with the odour of the apples.
“Are we done now?” asked Sidney, as she laid down the knife.
“We are,” she said with meaning emphasis. “Do you feel very tired after your exertions?”
“Not so tired as you’d imagine,” said Sidney. “The truth is I couldn’t bring myself to offer my services, for if you had accepted them I would have had to look at the apples instead of at you, and I did not have strength to make the sacrifice.”
“Could you make sacrifices?” she asked.