"We won't say no more about that. We're all sinners, the best of us. You're going to be my son's wife; you're therefore my daughter, and this house is your home whenever you please to come to see us. And I hope that that will be often. I like to have my children about me. I can't get about much now, so they must come to me. It is very sad not to be able to go to meeting. I've not been to meeting since Christmas, but I can see them going there from the kitchen window, and how 'appy they look coming back from prayer. It is easy to see that they have been with God. The Salvationists come this way sometimes. They stopped in the lane to sing. I could not hear the words, but I could see by their faces that they was with God... Now, I've told you all that was on my mind. I must not keep you; Fred is waiting." Esther kissed the old woman, and went into the orchard, where she found Fred on a ladder shaking the branches. He came down when he saw Esther, and Harry, his brother, took his place. Esther and Fred filled one basket, then, yielding to a mutual inclination, they wandered about the orchard, stopping on the little plank bridge. They hardly spoke at all, words seemed unnecessary; each felt happiness to be in the other's presence. They heard the water trickling through the weeds, and as the light waned the sound of the falling apples grew more distinct. Then a breeze shivered among the tops of the apple-trees, and the sered leaves were blown from the branches. The voices of the gatherers were heard crying that their baskets were full. They crossed the plank bridge, joking the lovers, who stood aside to let them pass. When they entered the house they saw the old farmer, who had slipped in before them, sitting by his wife holding her hand, patting it in a curious old-time way, and the attitude of the old couple was so pregnant with significance that it fixed itself on Esther's mind. It seemed to her that she had never seen anything so beautiful. So they had lived for forty years, faithful to each other, and she wondered if Fred forty years hence would be sitting by her side holding her hand. The old man lighted a lantern and went round to the stable to get a trap out. Driving through the dark country, seeing village lights shining out of the distant solitudes, was a thrilling adventure. A peasant came like a ghost out of the darkness; he stepped aside and called, "Good-night!" which the old farmer answered somewhat gruffly, while Fred answered in a ringing, cheery tone. Never had Esther spent so long and happy a day. Everything had combined to produce a strange exaltation of the spirit in her; and she listened to Fred more tenderly than she had done before. The train rattled on through suburbs beginning far away in the country; rattled on through suburbs that thickened at every mile; rattled on through a brick entanglement; rattled over iron bridges, passed over deep streets, over endless lines of lights.