That afternoon as Nettie was slowly rousing herself from her afternoon nap in her chair, she heard a low, joyful exclamation under her windows.
“Oh, lovely. Mrs. Evans, it’s like—a poem.”
Then a light flashed over the pale face, and Nettie lifted herself forward to look, and to speak.
“O, Judith, I wanted you to see them. You do love pretty things so.”
Judith came through the shed, and up the narrow rag-carpeted stairs to the open door of Nettie’s chamber.
“I wish you would write a poem for me.”
Nettie Evans was Judith’s “public,” and a most enthusiastic one; the young author looked very grave one day when Nettie told her that she liked her poems better than the ones she read to her from the Longfellow book.
“I have brought a poem for you; no one has seen it yet; I’ve copied it to send to my Cousin Don; you know he’s in Switzerland, climbing mountains, and having splendid times. It happened one Thanksgiving—I was here in the country, you remember, with my mother. I saw one rosy apple left on the top of a tree, and I felt so sorry for it. One day I thought of it again, and I wrote this.”
Judith drew her chair close to Nettie’s and took the folded sheet of note paper from her pocket.
“Oh, I wish I could make poems and sew carpet rags,” moaned Nettie.