“Don’t you deceive me about the book, Judith, for I don’t always go to church.”
“Aunt Rody,” with girlish dignity, “I never deceived any one in my life.”
“That’s a good deal to say.”
“I haven’t lived to be eighty-four, but I think I never shall deceive. I would rather die than not be true,” she burst out.
“H’m, you haven’t been tried.”
Judith thought she had; did not this grim, hard old woman try her every day of her life?
The long village street was lined with maples and locusts; inside the yards were horse-chestnut trees, lilacs, and syringas.
All over the beautiful country the fruit trees were in blossom; Judith revelled in the fragrance and delicate tints of the apple-blossom; she called it her apple-blossom spring.
The story and a half red farmhouse, with its slanting roof and long piazza, marked the “Sparrow place”; it had been the Sparrow place one hundred and fifty years. The red farmhouse was built one hundred years ago; the Sparrow girls, the eight sisters, were all born there long before many of the village people could remember.
As Judith stepped up on the piazza the bowed gray head at the window was lifted; the girl went to the open window and stood; Aunt Affy took off her spectacles and laid them in the book she was reading.