Once more his mind goes back to that happy autumn; he turns the apple in his hand caressingly, and looks out through the window and smiles.
Then he notices that the apple seems harder to the touch in one place, as if to call his attention to something. He looks at it again, and sees that the skin on one side is raised, with a cut all round, is if done with a knife. He lifts the flap of skin, and it comes away like a lid; underneath is a folded slip of paper.
"More!" he cries, and with trembling hands, with joy at heart, he unfolds it. Only a tiny fragment, and on one side a few words awkwardly traced with pencil:
"Now I know what it is to be sad. Have you quite forgotten your Rowan?
I think of you every night when I go to sleep."
The apple falls into his lap, the paper trembles in his hand, and a moisture dims his eyes.
He looks up. Great soft snowflakes are dropping slowly to the ground.
Minutes pass. The twilight deepens, till at last all is darkness, but he sits there still looking out, with the paper in his hand.
He can no longer see—but he feels how the great soft snowflakes are still falling….
DAISY
The daisy bloomed on the window-sill … in the window of a little room.